Footnotes
by Bibliotecaria.D
Summary: In which G1 acquires fine print in an attempt at explaining just what's going on around here.  Part 8: Carol of the Decepticons.  "Baby Jesus won't make it out alive."
1. Chapter 1

"_Cliffjumper spent most of his time on Earth wondering who'd betray him next."_

_[* * * * *]_

**Title: **(Re)boot to the Head

**Warning: **Captivity, gratuitous use of a character's paranoia

**Rating: **G

**Continuity: **G1

**Characters: **Cliffjumper, Jazz, Wheeljack, Constructicons

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **"_Hitting one's head" & "Priorities"_

_[* * * * *]_

Cliffjumper spent most of his time on Earth wondering who'd betray him next. Not that he seriously thought that the humans were in collusion with the Decepticons or his fellow Autobots were all Decepticon sympathizers. Well, not_ all of them_. That would be kind of stupid. Then it would just be him versus the universe. It just wasn't logical that the entire war was being fought between secret Decepticons and real Decepticons. He was up to the task of holding the Autobot cause out of the mud by his lonesome, but that was a ridiculous thought(1).

No, he was fairly sure Sunstreaker was also an Autobot. He was also fairly sure the sociopathic ray of Autobot sunshine had a badly-hidden fetish for brig time. It handicapped their cause. They couldn't win the war from inside a cell.

Case in point: his own dilemma. Being in the Decepticons' clutches was never fun, and being in a Decepticon cell added an extra dollop of _Abandon hope, all ye who get locked up here!_ to the gangs of fun he wasn't having. Not that he'd admit to wanting Sunstreaker here right now — never give away the true Autobots to the false ones! — but it'd be nice to have at least _one_ 'bot with him he could trust. Sort of. So long as neither of them had a chance to indulge in a macho competition. They'd get to yelling about who had a larger gun or could kick more aft, he'd scuff Sunstreaker's precious finish, and they'd both forget that they were locked in with the enemy during the ensuing fight.

Put it this way: he'd trust Sunstreaker at his back in a fight, but not even on the same planet afterward. _*Psycho.*_

Cliffjumper onlined his optics, took a quick look around the dark, dank, and above all _secure_ Decepticon cell, and wished very, very hard for Sunstreaker's crazed warrior presence. _*Right here, right now: hard, fast, and take me with you when you break, baby.*_

Oh,no. He was starting to sound like Jazz. It was pop culture osmosis, being constantly surrounded by radio and wireless frequencies that sounded exactly like everyone's favorite traitor(2). Maybe Jazz had picked up Earth slang with his famous mimic skills, but Cliffjumper bet Earth had actually adjusted to sound like Jazz. The humans had an amazing ability to adapt to what the universe threw at them, but although humanity was good, Jazz was better. Only the universe's best saboteur and spy could manage _that_ feat. How had everyone else conveniently forgotten that laughable, lovable Jazz headed Special Operations?

Unless they were all in on the conspiracy, too, and Sunstreaker couldn't get his aft out of the wash racks long enough to see what was going on.

Which was entirely possible.

"Traitor," he muttered, and in the cell across from him, Jazz shook his head painfully. It wasn't clear if he was shaking his head at the mini-bot or at the strobing light show currently flashing through his cracked visor. Despite his dire suspicions over Jazz's real alliance, Cliffjumper caught the next comment before it left his mouth. He stuffed it away somewhere to complain with later. Why waste his voice when there was no one with authority to hear? Not that they ever did anything, even when he spelled out the traitors' traitorous traitorisms(3), but it was the principle of the thing. Autobots respected the chain of command, even if the chain was corrupt.

Besides, he might hate Decepticons, but even he had to admit that Jazz would be hard-pressed to sabotage anything while reeling around like a drunk in a box. He'd spent a few entertaining minutes watching the black-and-white Autobot stumble into the cell walls over there before he'd started flinching with sympathetic pain. Eventually, he'd stridently demanded the dumb 'bot _"Sit the frag down!"_ He liked a good laugh as much as the rest, but laughing at someone's obvious pain was a Decepticon pass-time.

Soundwave had gotten the drop on Jazz well before the battle today, scrambling the majority of his visual and vocal circuitry and throwing some sort of curveball into his notoriously excellent balance. He'd been blundering around the med-bay like a newborn kitten for two days, beeping Morse code jokes to keep Spike from worrying — and let him know where not to be underfoot. Even an incapacitated Jazzmeister was an eerily quiet Jazzmeister. Easily-squished humans distracted by repairs beware: blind robots are still giant slagging robots. Jazz had been cheeping with annoying cheerfulness and creeping along with his back to the walls when everything went straight to the Pit this morning.

Cliffjumper only knew this because he'd been held back when Prime had summoned the Autobots to roll out against a Decepticon attack in Los Angeles. Literally held back, because that was the only way to keep a real Autobot off the field of war, even an Autobot on the disabled list after that incident with his cannon and a door that anyone could plainly see had been too narrow. Ratchet had pinned him to the berth with restraints to fix the damage _"For your own good!"_

That had, of course, been a blatant act of treachery meant to lead to exactly this situation. He'd been helpless to stop anything, even if he'd seen it coming. Jazz had been in his line of sight, as had Ratchet and Wheeljack. They'd been doing a fair job at the innocent act under his watching optics, but they were all professionals. Everyone knew Ratchet could lie his chevron off, especially when a mech was missing an arm (_"Stop panicking, it's just a scratch. You're fine!"_), and Jazz was probably held together at the weld seams by lies, none of which anyone could prove as false or, in fact, prove had been said at all. As for Wheeljack…well, he was Wheeljack. Wheeljack didn't have to lie. Wheeljack could invent a machine to lie for him. Then it would blow up to destroy the evidence.

And then Cliffjumper would wake up in a cell, because amidst all the other things going wrong with Jazz's internals, no one thought to check the mech's fritzing visor for Decepticon implants. As Starscream had gloated to the groggy Autobots, a battle in Los Angeles created the ideal opportunity for Skywarp to warp into the middle of the Ark's med-bay and cause havoc inside the Autobot base. Not that Cliffjumper would fall for that line, of course. It explained the situation perfectly, which made him suspicious. Perfect explanations were _too_ convenient. Covert operations trained their spies to spot surveillance devices as a rule. Even giving Jazz a free pass this time — good actor he might be, but nobody voluntarily crippled himself with dizziness like that — surely the Autobots Chief Medical Officer wouldn't fall for that. It took a special kind of stupid to miss that big of a security glitch. Medics had many specialties, but stupidity was one kind Ratchet didn't study(4).

Meaning that it had been intentional. What had the Autobots come to that even the medics couldn't be trusted?

It made Cliffjumper furious that Starscream ordered Ratchet taken from their shared cell before the red minibot had finished telling the medic off for betraying them. The extent of Skywarp's mischief seemed to end at kidnapping the four Autobots in the med-bay at the time, but Cliffjumper could see it was obviously a cover for retrieving the Decepticons' undercover agents. Jazz might have been the — unintentional? Were the false Autobots aware of each other? - victim for this particular plot, but Ratchet was currently off being 'interrogated' by Soundwave. _*Yeah, right. More like spilling his guts.*_

What puzzled him was Wheeljack's continued presence in the cells. The abduction had been a complete success, so why was Wheeljack not being 'interrogated' as well? At the very least, he should have been giving a dozen excuses to get himself out from under Cliffjumper's scrutiny _*Not that I'd believe him. Maybe he decided not to waste my time.*_

If the little red Autobot pressed himself to the very front of his cell and risked getting shocked by the spitting blue bars, he could catch a glimpse of the mad inventor's foot in the cell next door. It hadn't moved in the four hours since Cliffjumper had regained consciousness. That worried him. Wheeljack's self-repair systems were boosted enough to handle explosions in his face on a regular basis. The foot he could see hadn't so much as twitched, however, and he was beginning to be more than a little concerned. He'd accused the scientist of trying to kill the Autobots before, but he honestly couldn't make up his mind if Wheeljack was a Decepticon sympathizer or just insane. When it came down to it, Cliffjumper really just didn't want somebody to die next door. Not wanting people to die was part of being an Autobot, after all.

If nothing else, Jazz's aborted escape attempt across the corridor during the second hour of captivity had caused enough noise to wake the dead — which was a poor word choice under the circumstances but aptly descriptive. Surprise alone should have caused Wheeljack to flinch if he'd been pretending to be offline.

Finally, Cliffjumper couldn't take it. He stood up and shook a fist at the ceiling, ignoring Jazz's inquisitive _"Beedlebeep?"_ He had no other direction for his ire. "If you're going to take our medic away, then it's up to you fraggers to repair us!" The beeps turned into a more frantic message in Morse code, but he ignored it to continue shouting at whatever cameras were watching, "What kind of cowards are you, letting the enemy **bleed** to death? Yeah, stand proud and brag about how you sat by and bravely watched him deactivate from fluid loss. Ooo. Color me **unimpressed**, ya slag-eating bumper-humpers. Alert the media: Decepticons win by default!"

The code had settled into a constant message of _"Shut up shut up shut up."_ Jazz had his head in his hands, blinded visor covered by his fingers. Either he was laughing too hard to change the message, or he'd given up in despair.

Cliffjumper obeyed no orders from traitors. He upped the verbal abuse. "—toaster-spawned ugly pieces of a rejected microprocessor like to take it up the crank shaft with a twist! I bet you'd kick turbopuppies if Decepticons didn't have the collective coordination of a joint-sprung trailer after Omega Supreme fu—"

"I'll fix **you** if you say one more word!" roared down the corridor, and the hands were definitely covering a smile on Jazz's face. The saboteur hid his smirk behind his knees, drawing himself into a small ball on the floor as Cliffjumper blared a wordless jeer back. _*That's right, look at the shiny red minibot target with the big mouth. Jazz who? What, the poor, crippled, dangerous Special Ops 'bot? Pay no mind. Heeeere, Decepti-creep…*_

Multiple feet stomped down the corridor, and Cliffjumper's scowl deepened. If Jazz's visor were working, the two Autobots would have exchanged calculating looks. Four 'bots; possible to overcome, but difficult. Jazz _was_ pretty limited. Four Constructicons would not be taken down by a lone minibot. Three, maybe, but the Decepticons had not been gentle when they'd dumped Cliffjumper in this cell. His right arm had a problematic hitch.

The loudest stomper stuck his face near the bars and sneered, face twisting unpleasantly. Not that he'd ever been astonishingly attractive, but the smugness added an edge of ugly that inspired the onlooker to pound it off again. And, oh, Cliffjumper felt _inspired_. "Ya keep up the noise, shortie, and we'll take you apart, orders or not," Bonecrusher snarled. "Learn your place, Auto-bint: down on the floor with the rest of the minis!"

Inspiration often felt like stymied rage, in Cliffjumper's experience. "Orders, my drive train! You couldn't take me if I lay down first."

"Is that an invitation?" The snarl widened with anticipation, and the red Autobot beat a hasty retreat to the back of his cell.

"That's just disgusting," he snapped, deliberately misunderstanding the threat for innuendo, and Bonecrusher's face went blank. Then it warped into a patently overdone leer as the bulldozer Decepticon caught on with an almost audible click. Cliffjumper feigned illness that…wasn't all that feigned. He'd do a lot of things for his — theoretical — fellow Autobots, but interfacing with the enemy?

Ew.

Priorities, he had to remember priorities. Bonecrusher was uglier than a Dinobot's rear end and louder than the front end, but he wasn't the one giving orders. No, that was Scrapper. The leader of the Constructicons, unfortunately, was paying no attention to the minor mini-bot drama; instead, he focused on Jazz's miserable form in the other cell. The other Autobot had curled into a ball that prominently displayed the damage done by their captors. The sparking, fritzing visor added nicely to the effect. If Cliffjumper didn't know better, he'd say Jazz wasn't in any shape to fight his way past tin toy soldiers, much less four Constructicons.

"You can cut the act," Scrapper said crisply to Jazz as Bonecrusher made kissy noises and Cliffjumper gagged back. "We've already examined your damage. No Decepticon will be falling for that trick today." Jazz moaned faintly, too all appearances not acting, but Hook and Mixmaster followed Scrapper past his cell without a second look. The background sizzle of the cell bars suddenly cut off next door, and Cliffjumper glared at Bonecrusher as Hook disappeared from sight. Scrapper and Mixmaster observed whatever was happening in the other cell impassively, sharing a low-voiced conversation and ignoring the other two Autobots entirely while the dull clanking of repairwork started.

Bonecrusher stuck a hand through the bars and gestured obscenely, but they both knew the invitation wasn't serious. The second Cliffjumper moved toward the front of the cell, Bonecrusher would back off. The Decepticons weren't stupid. The Autobots had taken advantage of that game too often to get out of these cells in the past. Yeah, ew. But war sometimes called for disgusting solutions. He'd interface with Bonecrusher if he thought there was actually a chance of that trick working. Without a distraction, Cliffjumper and Jazz were stuck here. That left Wheeljack at the mercy of three Constructicons next door, and Ratchet…probably deserved the benefit of the doubt. He _might_ not be a traitor. Maybe. Starscream was a lying fragger, but _maybe_ he'd been telling the truth about their abduction, as ludicrous as the idea of getting truth from Starscream's chronically-untruthful vocalizer seemed.

Two Autobots down and out. Jazz and Cliffjumper locked in cells nobody was going to open. The only other bid he could make for freedom was of the expensive kind. Decepticons loved targets. Goad them into coming into the cell for a beat-down, and he might be able to take advantage of that. Bonecrusher had a temper, but what would catch the attention of the other Constructicons? *_C'mon Jazz, use that clever processor of yours_!*

The clanking on the other side of the wall stopped abruptly with the satisfied slam of a hatch. "As we thought, it was a simple case of broken leads." Hook emerged from Wheeljack's cell to join Mixmaster and Scrapper. He made an elegant gesture back into the cell, sounding bored, "Autobots. No design redundancy at all. A few crossed wires, and they fall offline."

"Hey, be fair." Across the hall, Jazz jolted in place, and Cliffjumper couldn't help but be relieved. Wheeljack's words dragged woozily, but he was awake! "I wasn't designed for war."

Hook didn't deign to make a sound so undignified as a snort, but it was heavily implied. "**You** weren't designed at all. An assembly line made you out of waste scrap."

"Oh, I was designed." That was, uh, _not_ woozy. No, not at all. "I was designed for the chaos of invention, not for the manufacture of stable structure. I was designed for **you**, much as I hate to admit it."

Bonecrusher twitched, his head turning almost against his will, and the quiet murmur of words between Mixmaster and Scrapper cut off as even Hook straightened. The steady chug of a racecar engine was unique to Earth, a sound that clicked in Cybertronian joints and coaxed their engines into trying to match the cycle. Wheeljack's engine revved, accelerating from a comfortable stand-by to the quick vibration characteristic of true high-performance propulsion. The audible sensation thrummed through the floor and walls, less of an invasion than a pervasive osmosis. It didn't just change the other mechs' individual rhythms; it _absorbed_ them into itself, made them Wheeljack's through nothing more than reverberation. They were following his body even before his words went after their minds:

"I was made to measure alkali and acids to absolute precision, to find new elements and their limits," the inventor's voice dipped lower, weaving through the subsonic purr already touching circuitry concealed behind armor, and the last place Cliffjumper had see that expression had been on Spike when the human had been hit on the back of the head with a board. Which was odd, because Mixmaster and Spike otherwise looked nothing alike. "All the mixtures you haven't dared try, I've perfected. I can create things you've never even dreamed of, Scrapper, and build them on my own. Crude by your standards, Hook, but my primary standards are those of an inventor. I'm not made to conform to your standards. It's not in my design to build within the limits or follow the rules. It's my job to experiment and survive to try again. Where I go," the scientist drew out slowly, hanging the Constructicons on his every word in breathless realization, "you follow."

The engine thrum subsided, ticking gently as cooler air reacted against hot metal. Four Decepticons, attention riveted by whatever they saw in Wheeljack's cell they hadn't seen before, stood staring in frozen silence.

Across the hall, Jazz uncoiled. Cliffjumper smirked. He was never sure who was a true Autobot on any given day. Sunstreaker wasn't here to back him up, leaving him no option but to rely on what traitorous mechs were at hand. As the saboteur ghosted to his feet and Cliffjumper prepared for the painful shock of lunging against the cell bars, he gave the other Autobots the benefit of the doubt. Again. For now. He couldn't win the war from in a Decepticon cell, after all, stuck here wondering who'd betray him next.

Hey, what the slag. Unreliable allies were the fun kind.

* * *

><p>[*]<p>

**Footnotes**

[ *]

* * *

><p>(1)No, not the thought of one minibot keeping the war going by himself. Obviously, Cliffjumper was capable of <em>that<em>. He meant that it was ridiculous to think that the fake Autobots and Decepticons were completely aware that they had replaced all the real Autobots and were so stupid they kept fighting anyway. Although…Decepticreeps were pretty stupid, sometimes.

(2)Cliffjumper had once asked how exactly the humans had managed to create a style of music that mimicked Jazz's Cybertronian namesake almost precisely. Blaster had thrown out some musical blather, of course, but what it boiled down to was that nobody really knew. They'd just woken up on Earth and — BAM! Jazz. Everywhere. There was coincidence, and then there was this, and what baffled Cliffjumper was that nobody else questioned it. Seriously? Come _on._

(3)Totally a real word, and not just in Cliffjumper's vocabulary. Red Alert had used it once, too, even if he'd immediately gotten a funny look on his face and asked the room in general if they thought his glitch was acting up. General opinion had been _Yes, really. Go de-stress for a while before something burns out._ But it was definitely a real word.

(4)Prowl had been known to sourly comment that Ratchet's specialty was Out-Stubborn-Fu, a form of combat that seemed to involve standing over patients on the battlefield and refusing to surrender them even when Megatron waved a fusion cannon in his face. The medic also practiced his specialty on his fellow Autobots, although with them he brought out moves like the Moral Hipthrow and Ethical Armlock. For a while, the running joke was that the only way to become the Ark's Chief Medical Officer was to behead Red Alert's latest security measure, a la The Highlander. _There can only be one CMO!_


	2. Omens

_After a certain period of time (and in certain crossovers), some things are inevitable._

_[* * * * *]_

**Title: **_Omens_

**Warning: **So stupid my brain hurts.

**Rating: ** PG

**Continuity: **G1/Good Omens

**Characters: **Blaster, Soundwave, Skyfire, Cassetticons

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **_Running out of time_

_[* * * * *]_

The entire Ark lost its collective jaw when Soundwave landed in front of the mountain, hands up even before Windcharger and Hound gathered their wits enough to heft a gun in his direction. "Assistance required," he droned over their barked demands(1) for surrender. "Rumble: in peril."

Even through a monotone, his concern came through loud and clear. That brought Blaster running on the double. His counterpart in the Decepticons could fake a lot, but this was the kind of trick that would backfire only on the Decepticon himself. Blaster would never go to Soundwave for help because the Autobots would gladly help him; the same could not be said for the Decepticons. The network of bribes and favors-owed among the Decepticons shifted depended on the day, sometimes even the hour, and aid rendered with an optic for revenge or advantage wasn't terribly helpful in a tight spot. If Soundwave knew, really knew, that his Cassetticons needed help, he truly only had Blaster as an option.

Soundwave, Blaster knew, was not stupid. Loyal to Megatron, yes, but not foolish. He wouldn't cut that lifeline, even to trick the Autobots into a trap.

A quick data squeal of information cemented Blaster's confidence. An electronic transmission done under the increasing hubbub around them, and Blaster knew the whole story. Knew it, didn't like it, and wasn't going to let any fragging red minibot with an attitude stand in the way of helping, either. "I'm telling you, Cliffjumper, you move it or I'm gonna **lose my cool**," Blaster gritted out. He'd placed himself between Red Alert and Soundwave without a thought, already pinging urgently over the internal Ark system for Skyfire. They did not have _time_ to arrest and interrogate Soundwave, no, sorry, maybe next time, Prowl. Oh, yeah, hi Optimus. No, you can't arrest him either. Busy now; talk later.

Speaking aloud seemed like a waste of time at the moment, but he knew rationally that he needed to actually tell everyone what Soundwave had transmitted to him. But this was the kind of Earth information that the other Autobots scoffed at him for. Every Autobot except—

Soundwave went slightly less stiff at his back, the Decepticon equivalent of wilting with relief, and Blaster grinned up at Skyfire. It was like seeing hope dawn. "Skyfire, fire in my mountain, we need to fly the friendly skies like **now**. Give a 'bot a hand?"

The issue at hand being that it _wasn't_ an Autobot who needed a hand, but that concern seemed kind of petty in the face of Blaster's urgency. Solemn blue optics slid between Soundwave and Blaster, seeming not to note the irritated and annoyed and downright insulted crowd of Autobots milling around them. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe had a pair of statis cuffs and were engaged in a weird, shuffling dance as Blaster fluidly moved to counter them every time they tried to lunge for Soundwave. The Decepticon was being as blatant as possible with his lack of reaction to the attacks, staying painstakingly neutral. Prowl and Red Alert were the most alarmed, if not the loudest in the group(2). They alternated between threats and appeals for an explanation. Optimus Prime exchanged nods with the massive shuttle. The Autobot leader seemed more bemused than anything by his communication officer's seemingly-traitorous brush-off.

"Where do you need to go?" Skyfire asked slowly, deciding to skip the whole treason issue and go for the facts alone(3).

Blaster whirled and kicked the cuffs out of Sunstreaker's hands. Jazz caught them on the rebound off Hound's head and joined the shuffle-dance with a cheerful bounce to his step. Blaster nodded amiably to the saboteur while not giving an inch. "London, m'man. London. We can't drive there in time, ya dig it?"

"…Ah." Now, Skyfire was not like most of the Autobots. He knew how to follow leaps of intuition, and Blaster's strange theories on London had found a receptive listener with Starscream's ex-partner. Careful observation had backed up many of the more bizarre hypothesis proposed. Traffic in London was one of those bizarre, yet obvious things. No Autobot could make it through London traffic in time(4). "Alright. May I ask what's so urgent about this journey?"

Soundwave spoke up. "Rumble: in peril. Trapped in altmode. Location: London. Exact location unknown." He looked up at the shuttle, and it could have been Skyfire's imagination, but he thought he saw a hint of pleading in the blank visor. "Assistance required."

Jazz grunted as Blaster got him under the fender, pushing him away temporarily. The two music mechs were half-sparring, half-serious, and Sideswipe tried to sneak around them. Soundwave edged in the opposite direction, hands still raised but quite clearly not wanting to be cuffed. Sideswipe yipped as Blaster leapt back from Jazz and snapped around, hooking his feet right out from under him and sending the red Autobot down in a crunching heap. A sympathetic hiss went through the crowd, along with a few fingers marking points on invisible scoreboards.

"Soundwave's boys can't do a car-to-car search without sending everything into hopeless chaos," the Autobot tapedeck called, intakes pulling air hard as he whipped back to face Jazz and Sunstreaker. "We ain't got **time** for this!"

Skyfire looked blank for only a moment, then sucked air in himself as that hit him. "How long has he been trapped?"

Decepticon and Autobot tapedecks traded despairing looks. "Two weeks today," Blaster said even as he ducked a fist aimed at his head. "Hey, watch it!"

"Skyfire," Prime put in, "might you explain why—"

"No time!" Blaster and Skyfire snapped as one. Hearing Skyfire raise his voice was enough to shut everyone up, but a high-pitched _beep beep beep_ made even Prime back off in a hurry.

"Whoooo-o-oa, look **out!**" Jazz flipped back, dragging Sunstreaker by one headfin as Skyfire initiated his transformation sequence. Unlike many of the smaller Cybertronians, this was not an immediate process. After a few too many close calls on the part of unaware Autobots, Ratchet and Skyfire had managed to install a quick stall in his transformation, short enough to not hamper combat but long enough for a series of shrill beeps to warn off smaller 'bots. Skyfire, like many of the Autobots with altmode-mass in subspace storage, actually got larger when he transformed. However, in terms of scale, he got _really_ large. Jazz propelled Sunstreaker out of the way just in time.

Bumblebee and Prowl dove apart to let them through, and all four smaller Autobots looked up in baffled irritation as the huge shuttle settled to the ground with a rock-pulverizing _whoomp_. "Get in. It won't be comfortable for you, but I can get us there in four hours."

Hound and Windcharger leveled their rifles as Soundwave suddenly moved, body folding up in transformation, but Blaster reached out a hand to grab the abruptly tiny Decepticon in midair. His free hand waved frantically. "Outta the way, guys! This is a matter of a fate worse than The Who!"

He pelted onboard, Soundwave in hand, and the hatch slammed shut. Hot air blasted the horde of mechs back, and when they could look up against without grit and burnt air being smashed into sensitive optics, Skyfire was only a dot on the horizon.

"What…just happened?" Prowl asked, slow and careful.

Red Alert answered, just as cautious and twice as hesitant, "Blaster defected?"

"Uh-hmm. Explain Skyfire."

"…temporary insanity?"

"Mind control," Sideswipe put in. Sunstreaker wiped angrily at his scraped finish and muttered something about _running away before I get them._ Ratchet was already on his way to the _Ark_'s bridge, presumably to use Teletraan-1 to transmit continued medical questions at the fleeing mechs. Hound and Windcharger lowered their guns again, glancing back at Optimus in embarrassment. He only shook his head dismissively. He didn't exactly feel it a bad thing that the two had failed to shoot a defenseless tapedeck.

Jazz, seemingly comfortable remaining flat on his back, pointed a finger straight up at the sky as if in revelation. "I vote for an actual emergency. 'Cause, yeah, I can't really see those cats bein' 'Cons." He waggled his visor at the mechs who turned to look down at him. "Bow before Skyfire's pacifist regime, Autobots! Blaster will force us to listen to WFN 85.7 Rock every day, 9 to 5, and BEE 101.3 Lite for the noon retro rundown." His lips quirked roguishly. "We cower in fear."

[* * * * *]

_Elsewhere, elsewhen, in London_

[* * * * *]

Ravage shifted around at Soundwave's feet, hissing static worriedly. Blaster had forbidden him from braving the London traffic, as even the Autobot technimal tapes were enough to scare the London drivers. Rewind and Eject were manning separate checkpoints, politely fending off rude honking and pointed finger gestures as they went through every car's supplies of cassette tapes for one particular signal. Rumble was camouflaged so well in his alternate form that not even Soundwave could locate him precisely. The blue tapedeck stood by another checkpoint, Decepticon insignia strategically covered to prevent panic, straining his sensors to the max at each car that passed. At the last of the four checkpoints, Frenzy fretted at Blaster's side.

Time was running out.

Two weeks, now, and counting.

_*"Homeruuuuuuun!"*_ crowed triumphantly over a shared channel, and Ravage perked up visibly. He transmitted a name up to Soundwave, and the Decepticon tapedeck listened attentively as Eject excitedly called for his Autobot counterpart. _*"Blaster, we got him!"*_

Only the spirit of cooperation kept Soundwave from launching right then and there, humans be fragged. _"*Rumble: status?*"_ he demanded as he stepped back from the checkpoint in order to ignite his thrusters. "Ravage: return." The human car he'd been inspecting peeled out like he'd threatened to step on it. Humans weren't completely stupid; large, multi-ton robots were best viewed from a distance.

"_*Ah…hold on. You'd best see this for yourself.*"_

An ominous chill dribbled down Soundwave's backstruts. That did not bode well. Although, perhaps the Autobot tape was simply saving his words? Rumble could be fine. Ravage whined inside him, tape crackling with stress. Frenzy cursed up a storm, but Soundwave dismissed his other tape's anger since it appeared that Blaster was merely preventing the hot-tempered Cassetticon from tearing his way directly to Eject's position. Knowing London traffic, the small Decepticon would likely end up a speedbump instead of a marauder.

It took a dreadful 5 minutes to reach Eject's checkpoint and land. It would have been only 3 minutes, but Soundwave chose not to initiate a fight by landing _on_ the humans. "Rumble," he said even before his thrusters cut. Frenzy was grudgingly flying Blaster, in his altmode of course, toward them, but he couldn't wait for the Cassetticon or Autobot tapedeck.

Eject nervously looked up at him and offered a tiny cassette tape with a hand-lettered paper label, _Beethoven's Fifth_, plastered across it. It didn't transform, but he'd already known that Rumble was trapped in his altmode. None of this would have been necessary if the mission hadn't gone terribly wrong, after all. He took the proffered tape apprehensively, not liking the apologetic look on the Autobot's face nor the faint trace of Rumble's signature. He could sense nothing but a hint of his Cassetticon in the tape. Anxiety ramping up, he inserted the tape into his chest and pressed _Play_.

Freddie Mercury asked if he was going to take him home tonight.

Less than a minute later, Blaster was flung free to transform as Frenzy hit the ground running. Soundwave had collapsed in a bleating pile, curled up around his cassette deck in a forlorn hug. Blaster transformed and landed feet-first. He looked at the mourning Decepticon. He watched as Frenzy stopped in his tracks. A stifled sound, somewhere between a scream and sob, came from the tape. Frenzy stumbled forward to paw at Soundwave's arm as if begging for reassurance. _Fat Bottomed Girls_ continued to provide an utterly absurd soundtrack for the moment.

He looked at his own tape, not amused.

Eject kicked the tarmac sheepishly and held up another tape, complete with classical music label _and_ Decepticon insignia. "Bad timing?"

* * *

><p>[* * * * *]<p>

**Footnotes**

[* * * * *]

* * *

><p>(1)Okay, to be honest it was more like polite requests. Windcharger didn't really do demanding even on a bad day, and Hound — everyone knew, although no one dared say it aloud — would run someone over before <em>barking<em>.

(2)Usually, that dubious honor went to Cliffjumper's robust and oft-exercised vocalizer. However, never underestimate the bellow of a CMO in full cry. Ratchet had come running — driving, actually, with lights, horn, and siren set on high — under the assumption of some sort of medical emergency because of the frequency of Blaster's urgent pings. He was loudly demanding to know _"Where the __**frag**__ is the patient?"_ He didn't care who, what faction, or the delicacy of the situation. He just needed _access_, Primus rust the lot of them, and if he had to bull through two superior officers and a frontliner to get it-!

(3)It was a good habit for a scientist. It drove Red Alert and Cliffjumper up the fragging wall. Skyfirian logic had disproven their favorite pet traitor theories one by one. It's hard to be taken seriously when the resident levelheaded scientist reveals you as a raving crazy time and time again. The worst part was that he seemed to thrive on their bile by simply not acknowledging it. His pacifist nature swam through their loathing like a fat, happy fish in a tank. It was so hard to stay _angry_ at a mech like that!

(4)In time for what? It didn't matter. For _anything_. Skyfire privately held his own theory on the phenomenon, as aerial observation had left him with the vague impression of Catholic symbolism in the twisted motorways. He didn't personally believe in the Christian Hell, but the roads _were_ a human construction, and humans were easily influenced by unconscious belief…


	3. Best Served

"_Is daw puddy tat afwaid of water? Awww, he is?"_

* * *

><p><em>[* * * * *]<em>

**Title: **Best Served

**Warning: **Backhanded revenge?

**Rating: **G

**Continuity: **G1

**Characters:** Ravage, Sideswipe, Ironhide

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **_Water _

_[* * * * *]_

* * *

><p>Sideswipe loved it when the Decepticons screwed themselves over. He could pound and pummel all he liked, but nothing beat the humiliation scored when a Decepticon got himself well and truly hoisted by his own petard. Starscream was like an ongoing demonstration of this(1). Some days, Sideswipe himself pulled a demonstration. The other Autobots took pictures.<p>

Ahem. Yes, well. It was more satisfying when a Decepticon did it.

The grudging _blip blip_ of an emergency beacon stopped Sideswipe so abruptly his tires skidded grooves in the dirt. Decepticon emergency beacon = get the camera prepped. He transmitted his location and took off toward the signal. The battle over the power station had ended only two hours ago. It was a good bet that whoever was calling for help was badly damaged and willing to be rescued by whomever got there first. Sideswipe, cheap Polaroid in hand(2), was going to be there first. He had to get his laughs in.

And actually rescue Ravage while he was at it. But laughing came first. Lots of laughing.

Ravage hissed static miserably at him from the middle of the river. The water was muddy and turbulent, churned to liquid dirt from the fight upstream, and the tiny technimal crouched in the middle of an eroding island. His propulsion system smoked along his side, so much scrap metal, and the choice was obviously the water or rescue. He'd chosen rescue.

Sideswipe rested his hands on his knees and wheezed, laughing so hard his vocalizer reset with every hitch of air intake. "Whazza'matter, kitty? Afraid of water?" the Autobot managed to get out after far too long. "Poor widdle kitty." He pointed, finger shaking as he broadcasted the perfect cartoon clip to everyone within range. "I tawt I taw a puddy tat! I did, I did! I taw a puddy tat!" Oh, this was awesome, this was brilliant, and he was never, ever going to let Ravage forget this. "Is daw puddy tat afwaid of water? Awww, he is?"

_*"I am __**not**__,*"_ Ravage growled in his oddly high, light voice.

_*"Just get him into custody,"*_ Prowl said, resigned to Sideswipe's personal brand of amusement. _*"Can you transport him as he is?"*_

Sideswipe eyed the technimal's fully functional claws. "Hey, puddy tat. I'm not touchin' you unless you transform."

Ravage bared nice, sharp teeth in his direction, knowing exactly what he wanted. Having a dangerous Cassetticon free to shred his interior wasn't a pleasant thought for the Lamborghini. _*"Do I __**look**__ like I can transform? What gears aren't blown out of alignment are locked up with organic filth."*_

_*"I'm on my way,"*_ Ironhide interjected immediately, and Ravage's audio receivers folded back flat. Sideswipe, the Decepticon would rip up because, well, even Optimus Prime understood that kind of damage after surrender into custody was just payback for petty, juvenile slag. Ironhide was Official Officer Material. The rulebook would smackdown any Decepticon who tried any tomfoolery in _his_ custody.

Sideswipe grinned at him. His hands were fair game if he tried reaching for Ravage before Ironhide got there, and they both knew it. It was an amiable agreement: touch the annoyed Decepticon and _die_, fragger. But the Autobot could take as many pictures as he wanted. In fact, he was under orders from Ratchet to take a look at the technimal from every angle. "Smile for the camera, Decepta-puddy tat!" Ravage hissed again. "Good one! Give the water another hiss, wouldya?" Sideswipe chortled, waving the newest picture through the air to speed-dry. "I can't believe you're afraid of water. What, do ya think you're gonna rust?"

The muted roar of Ironhide's engine was drawing near, and Ravage's optics slitted into evil crimson lines. _*"I am __**not**__ afraid of water,"*_ he repeated, and his audio receivers suddenly stood straight up as if inspiration had struck him from on high. _*"Your medic. Ratchet. He's to repair me, yes?"*_

_*"Of course I will,"*_ Ratchet put in. _*"We're not __**Decepticons**__ to leave prisoners unrepaired."*_

Optimus Prime interrupted before the provocative statement could start a fight. _*"You will be cared for, Ravage. We're well aware that Megatron will negotiate for your release, and it is the Autobot belief that even prisoners have basic rights for access to maintenance care and a pain-free existence."*_

_*"I thank you for your consideration,"*_ Ravage replied with a kind of stiff formality, _*"and I feel that as a Decepticon surrendering to your faction, you should be aware that I find it necessary to defend my pride at this moment from allegations of cowardice."*_

There was a beat of silence. Sideswipe tensed into a fighting stance. Ironhide's engine suddenly accelerated.

Ravage gathered himself into a fang-bared crouch — and leapt off the island.

The water engulfed him whole.

Sideswipe went from battle-ready to dumbfounded in a record nano-second. Optics blown wide, he gaped like a fish at the river. "Um…"

The silence over the Autobot channels spat static as realization dawned over all them. Ravage was a reasonable creature, if nasty when cornered. He wouldn't attack Sideswipe, and if he had, the large red frontliner would have responded with more than a numb single syllable. Meaning that something had happened that was probably deserved. _*"What did he do?"*_ Prowl asked.

Too shocked to be less than honest, Sideswipe said, "He sank." Then he added, because even he couldn't believe he hadn't thought of the completely obvious, "Y'know. Little cat, made of metal, jumps in deep water. He sinks. Makes sense."

Ironhide pulled up beside him and transformed. They both looked down at the river, which continued to rush by in a earthy tangle of whole trees, froth, and even a few dead critters. It was literally so much mud. "He's not going to be getting out of that by himself," Ironhide decided. "It was a deep river even before we fought in it. There's gotta be a good two or three meters of liquid muck on the bottom. He's probably lodged up to his tailtip in it." He gave Sideswipe a meaningful look. "**I'm** not going to be the one digging him out."

Sideswipe thought about it. He winced. His hands were going to be in Ravage's range, one way or another.

Ironhide's look blackened. "And there's no way we can rinse him off before stuffing him in me for transport, either."

Sideswipe winced again. Grubbing up Ironhide? Awwww, slaggit. The weaponsmaster was going to make him _pay_ for this…

The Autobot channel clicked open, and the gathering storm of static over the line indicated a medic's temper on the verge of exploding. _*"Let me get this straight. A mech with __**already exposed**__ injuries just jumped into a soup of grit and grime to further mire his insides in dirt that __**I**__ will now have to clean out?"*_ Sideswipe meeped a tentative sound of agreement back. Ratchet gave a Ravage-worthy growl. _*"Consider yourself on the floor-scrubbing roster indefinitely, scrapheap!"*_

Sideswipe sighed. "Yes, sir."

_*"That cat had better be in my medbay by the end of the shift, or I'll repaint you fuchsia. With __**house**__paint."*_

Sideswipe just made a face. "Yes, sir. Right away, sir." The channel clicked closed with an air of finality, the other Autobots respectfully letting that end the matter(3). Sideswipe knelt down, expression long-suffering, to begin fishing Ravage out of the mud. A set of teeth clamping onto a fingertip would be his first clue that he'd found the little fragger.

He stubbornly didn't look up at Ironhide. The other Autobot had a camera out.

* * *

><p>[* * * * *]<p>

**Footnotes**

[* * * * *]

* * *

><p>(1)Swindle came in close second, but Sideswipe had slightly more sympathy for the conniving trader. At least the jeep occasionally had to call for help because of something he genuinely hadn't been responsible for. The humans sometimes won their ongoing competition with the Decepticon faction for Most Traitorous Bastards. Even Prowl had patted the trader's shoulder (gingerly, either from inexperience or fear of conmech-contamination) after the rescue mission that had freed Swindle from a secret agency billing itself as 'Sector Seven.' The Autobots still hadn't found out exactly what <em>that<em> was all about. Red Alert periodically contacted Swindle on the down-low for updates on anything further that the thoroughly traumatized Decepticon could recall.

(2)Weird but true: Polaroid cameras could survive anything thrown at them once Wheeljack got done modifying them for 'bot-sized use. They were so primitive that they frustrated the best efforts of Lazerbeak, and the photopapers could be hidden in any armor crevasse available. At this point in the war on Earth, if turned upside-down and shaken, Sideswipe would likely rain incriminating pictures.

(3)The Autobots didn't precisely fear Ratchet, but they knew there was a time and a place to get the frag out of his way. The _Ark_'s medical officer wasn't known for his violence, but he _was_ known for creative vengeance. Worse, for those stupid enough to cross him, he had the glacial patience of a mech who knew they all had to come back to medbay eventually. _Heh heh heh…_


	4. Taking What We Want, Before

_Fireflight/Vortex: These rotors are _mine_ now._

_[* * * * *]_

**Title: **Taking What We Want, Before They Teach Us Differently

**Warning: ** The brutal self-interest of children, in adult bodies.

**Rating: **R

**Continuity: **G1

**Characters:** Vortex, Fireflight

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **_Fireflight/Vortex: These rotors are _mine_ now._

_[* * * * *]_

The Aerialbots were young. Too young for any battlefield, really, but specifically for Earth. The young and inexperienced mechs in both factions were long dead, and only the best fighters had survived to reach Earth. On this planet, far from training and teachers and gentle air, the Aerialbots were thrown up into blue skies to fight the day they were created. Earth the battlefield, where veterans reigned the skies and they hadn't the experience to pick a profile to match a face flashing over raised guns and flying fists. They managed to live through their first day, then the next battle, and the days of war after that. They aged, despite the odds(1).

They fought and lived with the fierce brutality of the very young, however, and Prime's group of stupendously idiotic Autobots didn't know enough to not mistake youthful enthusiasm for a lack of grounding.

Vortex knew better. He'd picked enough mechs — Decepticons or Autobots, it didn't matter — apart at the welds to know that the younger a mech was, the less maturity wore the sharp edges off living. Experience let a mech be a monster. The demons of Cybertron were monsters because they knew better and chose to continue. Certain Decepticons had become monsters long ago; demons in the ranks that even other casual criminals avoided. Vortex made the decision each and every time to continue wrecking lives, closing his hands around his victims' necks with the conscious thought that he never made the so-called _right_ choice.

The very young didn't have that background knowledge running through their minds. Oh, certainly the Autobots had tried to install the subsets, preprogram the morals, but that was hand-feeding information to a toddler. The Aerialbots had probably responded to the preached monologues with wide, glazed optics and restless boredom. Information wasn't the same as knowledge, and knowledge had to be earned. Choices had to be _made_, not dictated from afar.

Eventually, the Aerialbots would learn through observation and experience the grounding that fully mature mechs had for their ethical systems. They'd made a large step in that by actually deciding to stick with the Autobots that one time(2). It'd been a blunder from the Decepticon jets that Vortex had raged about later, once the potential for some truly manipulatively delicate handling of the situation had passed. If only he'd been allowed at the Aerialbots' tender minds, to shift the pieces into a puzzle that they'd unlock at his direction…

He was a monster, and he knew how to create monsters as well. The very young had something that not even he could twist further, however. They had the sheer, inexperienced ingenuousness of those who simply did not know better — or better yet, didn't know to care.

They flew and fought with the selfish, hateful, avalanche of rage and glee that children with tantrums possessed, throwing their weight against whatever got in their way. They didn't care about consequences. They didn't care about _others_. Vortex suspected they managed to pass themselves off as not totally self-centered to the other Autobots only through the imposed gestalt link. It was more difficult to see a truly selfish mech when the selfishness was spread over more than one mech. The Autobots had no idea what they had in their ranks, contemptuously watching like xenophobic aliens at a galactic zoo.

The Aerialbots hadn't had _time_ to knit together the bonds that social networks required. There were no internal surfaces to catch the barbed hooks of regret and doubt. Anything that might go against their self-assured confidence flew past their minds, having nothing to grip and hold onto. There was only the smooth, slick, hollow-but-absolute certainty of the young and very, very sure of themselves. They hadn't, after all, learnt any better.

It bent Vortex's libido over a chair and ravished him every time he saw even a hint of it on the battlefield. A real display of it left his knee joints a little weak and had him pawing Brawl's treads and wibbling for attention afterward.

The odd thing was that Vortex found them, as a whole, unattractive. The Aerialbots were built strangely, as if the Autobot engineers had taken apart a human-designed jet and clumsily filled in the root mode to fit. There was no indication that their alternate mode acted as armor and disguise instead of a shell. There was no uniformity among their forms, or even their personalities. The Decepticon jets had been utterly repulsed; the combiner teams had been more discretely appalled. At least the Stunticons had been designed with more roles than _Become a gestalt. No, seriously, that's your only lot in life. Whatever could you mean, range of function?_

But leaving them at loose ends had certainly added to the dissociative fugue as the Aerialbots' raw minds made connections and fixated. The results, Vortex decided, could have been better. They could have easily fit into the Decepticon ranks with some prodding. Vortex could have caught one or more of them for his own taste of adventure. It could have been better.

However, getting flattened by the crunch of impact, rotors stomped into the dirt by hot thrusters, pain uncaringly caused without a sign of hesitation? Never better. No one had apparently informed the Aerialbots of such things as _forbidden pleasures._ Or rather, the prissy Autobots had probably filed that under one of their strict, stupid rules, and like slag was Vortex going to let that bit of information turn into learned knowledge. He had his own lessons to teach, and they were the kind that were likely illegal under Prime's ethical system, fun as flying through a tornado, and would leave him crawling back to Combaticon HQ whimpering with pain and pleasure the whole way.

The best part would be the crawling, because that was going to take half of forever and allow him to play this encounter on repeat the entire time. His legs were already beyond supporting his weight, so the crawling would be literal. It was going to be glorious. Fireflight bent two of his rotors against the burning feet braced on them, and Vortex _screamed_ as they reached the vibrating tension point where metal flexibility maxed out. A little more, a tiny bit more, and—

Vortex gasped, clawing helplessly at the ground as sensors strobed through their highest settings into the trembling realm where they weren't sure if they were registering agony or intense pleasure. They shrieked warnings in his relay centers either way. The barest turn of the Aerialbot's wrist would crack the rotors their entire length like a bundle of sticks held together only by his rotor mount, and he was torn between suggesting it or just hoping the slagging jet would twitch the pressure high enough to snap them in half. He was already praying the 'bot would get more inventive on the remaining two rotors. Young mechs had the ball bearings to experiment with things older mechs had lost the imagination for.

Fireflight stopped right at the limit, the slightest tint of mature thought in the childlike glitter in his innocent blue optics. Like a human child wondering if it were wrong to pluck the wings off a honeybee, even though the bee stung and he wanted a chance to stroke the fuzz on its back without it flying away.

"Don't—stop n-n**ow**," Vortex ground out, half pleading and half demanding. This honeybee really, really wanted his wings plucked and back stroked. He didn't know what he could do to _make_ Fireflight continue.

This Aerialbot had always been the flighty one. He'd never been able to pinpoint if Fireflight was absent-minded or abstractly brilliant in the same way Skywarp occasionally betrayed. That kind of genius might have already figured everything out, which was scary. To take Vortex right to the precipice and abandon him there would bring him to begging quicker than outright torture. Frag, he'd happily grovel, right here on his belly, if that's what it'd take for the jet to finish this. That'd be really smart of the Autobot, and…actually really hot, now that he thought it.

Hotter yet, however, was the youthful, pitilessly hard light restored to Fireflight's optics when Vortex managed to twist enough to get his visor out of the dirt. Not a monster, not a conscious beast deciding right or wrong, but a young mech who simply took his joy when and how he found it. Vortex stared and squirmed and squealed as the slow, slow twist started on just one of the warped rotors and — oh, oh yes, _oh_, ah, a~ah — the thruster against the other whined online and began to _melt_ the stressed metal.

_*Take me to the slagheap, Primus, I've died and gone to the smelter!*_

"These rotors," sweet and light, as possessive as a child with a new toy, Fireflight smiled brightly, "are **mine** now."

[* * * * *]

**Footnotes**

[* * * * *]

(1)Swindle took the bets, of course, and the odds had been heavily-but not surprisingly-not in their favor. The Autobots thought that the Decepticons regarded the Aerialbots half-humorously, half-warily, like adult humans from a military unit watching a preschool class play with automatic weaponry. Instead, what had struck Swindle was the strange sense of pity the Decepticons placing the wagers all seemed to share. Rookie Decepticons like the Stunticons weren't mistaken for or (stupidly) treated as mature mechs, and the Decepticon faction as a whole couldn't fathom how the Aerialbots got through the times between battles, much less the battles themselves. Autobots, they agreed with the odd bemusement of spectators watching a henhouse adopt a nest of baby chickenhawks, hadn't a clue how to deal with newbies.

(2)The betting had been fast and furious that day, changing by the hour. Condescending pity for the ignorant Aerialbots had changed to incredulous scoffing. Siding with the Autobots? It really had been like seeing chickenhawks choose to start clucking and pecking at the dirt with the hens.


	5. SwindleBolivia's Discount Emporium

_"The one thing I'm not selling, no matter the price."_

_[* * * * *]_

**Title: **Swindle-Bolivia's Discount Emporium (and Petting Zoo)

**Warning: **A Decepticon thinking himself superior to Autobots.

**Rating: **G

**Continuity: **G1

**Characters:** Swindle, Bobby Bolivia

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **_Swindle - "The one thing I'm not selling, no matter the price."_ Also, this fic is a definite nod to _"Thief"_ by Dierdre.

_[* * * * *]_

* * *

><p>It wasn't strictly true that Decepticons had no friends. Casting every single Decepticon out there as a conniving malicious bastard made no sense on the face of it, as even an army unit would dissolve under those kind of interpersonal conditions(1).<p>

No, Decepticons had friends. Many friends, in fact. They just didn't tend to have them in the same social context as Autobots did. Autobots had this oddly narrow perspective wherein they saw the galaxy through rose-tinted optics. By their lights, 'bots hung out together and helped each other because of gooshy, rather nebulous feelings of love and fondness. Any other view of these helpful relations would be loudly greeted with indignant accusations of _'using another mech'_ or _'exploiting someone.'_

In response to which arguments Swindle didn't even bother arguing anymore. It wasn't worth the hassle. Simple questions like, "Why do you hang out with him?" always forwent the obvious, if complex, tracing of personal history that explained the trading of favors, gifts, amusement, and needs that had gone into the present relationship between two mechs. Autobots denied those measurable threads of connection in favor of immeasurable, unreliable answers like, "I like him." Asking in turn, "Why?" was like banging his head against his own armor: it damaged his patience and did nothing to change the outlook of the stubborn Autobot he was trying to talk to.

Instead, Swindle sat back on his wheels and watched with judging optics the complex friendships shift among the Autobot ranks.

"See how long playing nice lasted there," he commented when Tracks snapped at Sunstreaker. The two vain Autobots proceeded to have a loud row. "None of those mechs want to be there," Swindle pointed out when other Autobots moved in to intervene before it came to blows. "That one there is an officer; his job is to mitigate these situations. The one with the rifle is weighing his own involvement against the potential difficulties navigating the new social dynamics of the _Ark_. Ah, see? He's backed out. I'd bet you sixty credits he's worked out some way to stay on speaking terms with both of them without crossing either. Interpersonal politics at work there. Horse-trading on past favors, if I know _that_ one at all. The red one has to interfere, or half the Autobots will blame him by association. Military rank and necessity keep Sunstreaker in the Autobots, not any of the polite words they say out loud. If the red one wasn't so good with bargaining or if either weren't as quick in battle, they'd both be kicked out on their skidplates. Look at the way Tracks is lunging; interpersonal politics again. He can't hit first or he'll damage his reputation, and that'll lower his status among the Aubobots."

Tracks and Sunstreaker were being held apart by various mechs with long-suffering looks on their faces. "Heh," Swindle swished his windshield wipers at his small companion, "you just watch. Sunstreaker won't speak with him for a week, but they'll still associate and pretend to get along because they're trading wax jobs. If they didn't smile and swallow down the arguments, the other Autobots would accuse them of using each other. Goodness knows, they can't have _that_."

"An' they're suppos'd t'be friends."

"And they're supposed to be friends." The Decepticon made the contented sound of a bettor collecting his winnings as the two Autobots stormed in opposite directions, leaving the other Autobots twittering in their wakes. "I have a lot of friends like that. They just don't feel obligated to pretend to _like_ _me_."

"Mmhmm." The dark human leaned back against the Jeep's windshield and stretched his legs out. The beer in his hand was warm where it had been resting against Swindle, and a bit of foam had leaked out of the can, over his thumb, and into the crack of the Combaticon's hood. In no time at all, the beer would dry enough to become sticky. It left the man's hands tacky and smelled like burnt popcorn when the Decepticon's engine ran hot. It was a familiar sensation for both of them.

Decepticons didn't believe in cuddly warm feelings. They believed in concrete things like owing a favor here and cultivating a network of allies there. Things they could trade on. Swindle did tend to smile and smarm at most the people he met. He genuinely liked a lot of people; that didn't mean he didn't keep a running tally of how much they owed him - and he kept a gun handy for when liking had to take a backseat to business. That was fairly common in the Decepticon ranks. Entire social maps among the soldiers navigated battles and the aftermaths. The Autobots dressed it up in pretty words and niceties that Swindle wasn't even sure existed. Like…love. Did love really exist? Could anyone measure it? Affection? What _was_ affection? Would it stand up to a missile strike, or take a piece of shrapnel for him?

He could list 14 mechs who would throw themselves in front of him during battle. They owed him that much. He could rattle off another, even lengthier list of mechs willing to carry him off the battlefield at some risk to themselves. Another list of mechs could be relied on to pay for his repairs or even repair him themselves. Swindle had made himself invaluable to the rank and file, and more importantly, to the officers of every unit he'd encountered. What his wide-reaching network of trade hadn't insured, orders from above could accomplish for him.

The Autobots said Decepticons didn't have friends. Swindle scoffed at that narrow-minded view of the galaxy. He watched the _Ark_'s lovey-dovey interactions through the optics of an outside observer, and he narrated what he saw in Decepticon terms of give and take. And the human on his hood nodded thoughtfully every time.

"You know who has the most friends in the Decepticons?"

"Nuh-uh. You tell ol' Bobby."

"Starscream."

An incredulous sound filtered through a spray of beer, and then Bobby was coughing his strange air intake system clear. " - joking!"

Swindle hummed a negative, barely registering the spatter of warm beverage pattering on his hood. "He's got so much hanging over me, I'd break my own axle if he asked. But." He paused significantly, waiting for the slight shift in weight that meant the man was leaning forward, intrigued. "But he'd never ask that of me."

"'cause you're friends." Bobby wiped futilely at the stains on his jeans before giving up with a shrug and sipping the sad remnants of his beer.

"Because we're friends."

They both stopped to consider that seeming collision of ideas: the word as the Autobots used it, the meaning as the Decepticons deciphered it, and the delicate usage by, of all mechs, Starscream. The longer the silence went on, the easier it got to mesh it together. Easier to understand, even easier to accept, but easiest yet to just relax and open another can of beer. It was warm as only a can of beer in the hot desert sun on a car hood could be. Foam bubbled over brown hands and slopped onto the purple hood. Swindle's shock absorbers hissed as the Decepticon waggled his tires and settled into the sand: a quiet noise like a comfortable sigh.

"Hey. Swindle?"

"Yeah?"

"Be straight wit' me. We buddies?"

"Sure."

"Good."

A breeze barely stirred the hot air. Far, far off in the distance, Swindle's little spy camera — courtesy of his friend Reflector, who had been more than happy to pay off part of their debt by loaning it to him — continued to monitor the kicked-beehive activity of the Autobot base. One of Bobby's feet ticked in time to the song that had been on the radio when his Decepticon pal had busted through the wall of his trailer/office and abducted him. The song had stuck with him on a wild roadtrip across two states, one national border, and a ghastly stint of Montezuma's Revenge. Swindle absently tuned into a radio station currently playing that song, and for a couple minutes, Spanish lyrics crooned at the cacti and scorpions. It was a good song. They'd both associate hostage situations and being chased by Autobots with it for years afterward. Also, in Bobby's case, diarrhea.

Bobby shifted around a bit, trying to find a better fit between spine and windshield without much success. "'Cause, buddy, you still owe me thirty grand for all the cars ya junked."

"Oh, please. Ten grand at most. That old jalope out front didn't even have windows."

"Twenty-five grand. It had sentimental value. You could have called ahead. I'd-a moved it."

"Yeah, you'd have replaced it with something more expensive. Twelve. And it had to look real, you know."

"It was real, alright! You trashed my trailer! Twenty-two."

"You're crazy; fifteen. The point of being a decoy is to sucker everyone's attention, not to politely knock and ask if you'd like to go for a drive."

"You hated that Grand Am. I think ya hit it on purpose. Twenty-one."

"You were incapable of selling it. You should be grateful I got rid of it. Sixteen, and I'm not going any higher."

"Yeah, y'are. It's the junkyard for it now. You hit that little yellow'un over the head with it. Police probably towed it for evidence."

"…slag, you're right."

"I'm never gettin' it back."

"Nope." The Jeep sounded far too smug about that fact. Bobbie gave him a beady-eyed look of suspicion. Swindle chortled. "I'm buying it from the impound lot. According to the police report, it has a perfect imprint of Bumblebee's face. I know somebody who'll pay good money for — "

"Twenty-five."

"Slaggoff."

"Pay up, _buddy_."

It was Bobbie's turn to snicker. Decepticon and human continued to bicker amiably, Bobbie's brown skin darkening under the desert sun and the Mexican beer mysteriously disappearing the way beer usually does. Far to the north, Autobots scrambled to track the conmech Combaticon and his human hostage while said hostage made his own observations about unstable Autobot friendships and stable Decepticon alliances.

Up in California, a true eyesore of a used car lot/petting zoo was inspected down to the last receipt by police and Autobots alike. They found nothing unusual about Bobby's business. Aided for years as he'd been by a chance encounter with a lone Combaticon, one Swindle by name(4), Bobby knew the value of a good front. The authorities found nothing at all wrong, not even a hint of anything to dig deeper into, and they dropped that angle of investigation to go chase different clues. Which was the point, after all. The man was a cheat and a fraud, but a legal one. No one had the slightest clue why a Decepticon, much less Swindle, would risk pursuit and retaliation by kidnapping Bobby B. the used car salesman. And while the Autobots and friends(5) wondered and investigated and were thoroughly distracted by the puzzle, Megatron's latest master plan went into effect in Scandinavia, right on time.

The duo spent six days in Mexico avoiding the resulting indignant uproar. They went first to Tijuana, because nobody in their right mind would think to look there for a Decepticon with a hostage. That's exactly why they spent three days there.

The other three days were spent out in the desert, baking in the hot sun. The days seemed to go on for entire weeks as the sun sluggishly inched across the sky. With so much time and so little inclination to move(6), they lazed about and talked about nothing, everything, and absolutely anything.

What Swindle would remember eons later, ages after the last human had evolved and Mexico had been forgotten as not even a word in history, was the weight of beer cans on his hood. Even after he changed his vehicle mode, he could feel the touch of aluminum; the curving lines teetered on their sides, and the perfect circles sat upright in pools of warm liquid. Sensor memories always the rooted the deepest, touch and scent and patterns staying on even after visual images and sound bites were corrupted by battle damage and emergency backups until the files were irreparably distorted. The tacky touch of human skin separating from his paint lingered long after the memory of human's jovial face blurred and smudged. He forgot the exact chemical composition of the atmosphere humans had breathed, but the white flash of a salesman's smile against dark skin stayed with him. The sharp reek of an unwashed, sweaty Hawaiian shirt crumpled in Swindle's backseat made it through to the present, yet the shape of the body that had worn it had inevitably been erased. He could recall the swinging cadence of Bobby's speech, although the sound of the man's voice degenerated into static in his memory files. The smell of engine-burnt beer survived virus purges, but not the topics of their many conversations had while the human drank.

The glittering, optic-searing sign on the asteroid Swindle owned, here and now, traced letters in an alphabet that had faded away before the pixels of the human's last picture had dissolved. Bobby B.'s face had outlived his language, but it had scattered to nothing under the invasive probe of a particularly hardline Autobot merchandise inspector. The conmech looked up at the last English words in the known galaxies and tried to pronounce them. He failed. The sign's words, if not the sign itself, had survived 16 relocations, the destruction of a planet, 3 civil wars, 44 battles, 696 customer brawls, 2 assassination attempts, double parking, and half a dozen tries at buying or outright stealing it from him. The sign survived, but the words were lost to Swindle.

He knew that they had been important, once upon a time, but time had wrestled this from him. English was a language forever gone, and the individual sounds assigned to each letter had been forgotten. He knew what the sign meant, but he lacked the ability to say the words. It was a design now, instead of a name.

That depressed him briefly, although his expression never wavered. His optics dimmed as he chased the faint memory of the sound of a name, only a few syllables long, but with an internal bleep from a scan program, the damaged file deleted itself. After a moment, Swindle's optics brightened again. He stood staring up at the sign for a while more, but business called. He turned and went back inside. At the pressure door, he hesitated and glanced back.

The pop of a can opening, the sticky drip of fluid onto his hood, and the easy rise-and-fall rhythm of a carbon-based lifeform had imprinted in his memory, but Swindle knew that time would take it all away. Eventually, Bobby would disappear entirely. That was the price of making friends, even among Decepticons. Concrete things like memories and favors and specific reasons wore out and were discarded. Autobots clung to feelings, wringing vague implications out of fading importance. They mourned the soft, soppy, immeasurable bits and dwelt on their regrets. Decepticons…moved on when the network came undone, and it always did.

Swindle wasn't a sell-out. Not when it came to his friends.

The sign stayed up for now.

He owed his buddy that.

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**Footnotes**

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><p>(1)The Stunticons were an exception to the rule, but like every exception, their exception had exceptions. They were all conniving malicious bastards. However, they were also a combiner team. Therefore, they <em>had<em> to work together. They didn't have a choice. From the outside, there seemed no possibly way to make the Stunticons function. Their very incompatibility skewed them like jigsaw puzzle pieces standing at right angles — with the out-of-nowhere effect that they worked together very well indeed, jigsaw puzzle pieces making a previously unrecognized 3D sculpture. It wasn't an intentional thing, but neither was their exceptional interpersonal viciousness. They were, as Vortex had explained to the other Decepticons(2), just very, very young mechs shoved into the midst of a war without any guidelines beyond jury-rigged programming and Megatron's orders. They'd get over their initial selfish youngling problems and adapt to socializing like normal Decepticons once they grew up a little.

In the meantime, the Stunticons managed to bond as a team far better than anyone expected. From their neurotic beginnings and mental problems blossomed such common interests as an adorably psychotic love of cats, an obsession with collecting McDonald's Happy Meal toys, and stockcar rallies. Vortex(3) had high hopes of slowly introducing them into the Decepticon ranks through the careful application of popular Cybertronian soap operas, as the Stunticons had a magnetic attraction to any TV showing _As The Kitchen Sinks_. That could easily transition into the common Decepticon addiction to wartime shows like _All My Battalions_. Except for the pregnancies, the shows were eerily similar…

(2)Mental health, like physical health, was supposed to be the realm of the Constructions. Two problems popped up with the Stunticons: A. the Constructions didn't really care enough to explain them to anyone else. Megatron's loyalty programming forced the Stunticons to obey and work (somewhat) with the other Decepticons, and that was good enough from the ever-too-busy Constructions' point of view. B. Vortex actually had a fairly good grip on what was up with the Stunticons. The Constructions had simply pressed him into service to explain the whole Stunticon Situation and associated baffling behaviorisms.

(3)From interrogator to babysitter/psychologist in the course of one conversation and a memo from Hook to Megatron. Scrapper forever treasured the look on the helicopter's face when the Combaticon realized that Megatron's order superseded any objections he had to his new 'promotion.' The scary thing was how rust-rotting _good_ Vortex was at it. Understanding how mechs' minds worked applied to both jobs, apparently.

(4)But that's another story altogether, and it'll keep for another day. Besides, it would take up 44 footnotes all on its own.

(5)"Political allies," Swindle clarified. "Yeah, well, I voted for th' other guy," Bobby said back.

(6)Swindle claimed fuel was too expensive to waste on relocating, which was patently ridiculous when he broke out the solar panels. Bobby only stopped complaining when Swindle revealed part of the expense was caused by hauling the weight of 14 six-packs of beer. The obvious solution? Drink all the beer.


	6. Because You Won't Find It Here

_"It took a good two weeks for the Decepticons to start noticing Ravage's new…accessory."_

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**Title: **Because You Won't Find It Here

**Warning: **Serious psychological problems abound. Just not of the expected varieties.

**Rating: **PG, for off-stage activities.

**Continuity: **G1

**Characters: **Decepticons

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **_#1: __Task - Write a scene in the life of a character with a serious psychological problem, and how those surrounding him/her react to it - and make this as plausible as possible! That means no "love heals everything", or anything like that.__ #2:__ "If at first you don't succeed... cheat. Repeat until caught. Then lie." #3: __Scenario - taking the credit for someone else's work.__ #4: Dread._

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><p><strong>#1 <strong>

Things at the Decepticon base being as they were, it took a good two weeks for mechs to start noticing Ravage's new…accessory.

To be perfectly fair, it wasn't like most of the Decepticons noticed Ravage all that often anyway. Because, well, duh, the technimal was small and dark-colored in a large base with chronic lighting problems. Also, Ravage was one of the Decepticons' best spies. Spies weren't known for neon signs hovering over their heads advertising their presences(1).

So the presence of the thin, bright _collar_ around Ravage's neck caused many a double-take around the base when the Decepticons first started noticing it. The red color was enough to make any mech wonder if Mixmaster was slipping additives into the energon dispenser again, but the shiny bow artfully off-center on the back of the technimal's neck started a queue outside the repairbay. It was carefully crafted metal, but it _looked_ like a satin gift ribbon, complete with scrolled tails and plump loops. Proportionally tiny to fit on the Cassetticon(2), it might have been unnoticeable except for the fact that it was bright yellow.

The whole picture of cat with bow was quite cute. For much the same reason, it was therefore very, very wrong.

Hook opened the repairbay door at the beginning of his on-duty shift, eyed the line waiting outside, and harrumphed. "Who's here to mentally scar Scrapper for life today?"

Two hands went up near the back. Brawl and Ramjet did ask, even if they didn't tell. Better to consult with the experts beforehand, or the Constructions would be forced to extrapolate on the unnatural affair — in public, because they believed in punishing the willfully stupid — based on the damage done afterward.

"Love you, too, ya fraggers. Get in here." The Constructicon stood aside as the duo smugly elbowed their way up the line and into the repairbay. "It would be you two," he muttered, then directed a scornful glare at the sheepish-looking Decepticons still waiting. "Who's seeing things?"

"I see lots of things," Skywarp said from somewhere in the middle, and Thrust and Thundercracker smacked him on the cockpit not a moment later. "Ow! Ow! Hoooook, they're hitting me~!" the Seeker whined, grinning.

"Good, do it harder next time. What are you, Autobots? Leave dents," Scrapper said as he passed by the open door. His attention shifted in the direction Brawl and Ramjet, best left unseen, had gone. "Not **again!**…Primus help me, because I might actually want to know this time. How did you even - that's not supposed to bend that way, and don't come complaining if it snaps!"

Hook cocked his head as a ripple of curiosity went through the hall. The nearest Decepticons tried to peer around him. He folded his arms and did an outstanding imitation of a wall between their nosiness and patient confidentiality. If they wanted to know the disturbing details that badly, they could pay a bribe like everyone else. "You heard the mech," he said at the jets.

Thundercracker and Thrust snickered and smacked their black-and-purple companion again, harder this time. Skywarp winced and covered his cockpit as something cracked ominously. "Stoppit!"

"Orders," the other two jets chimed, all innocence.

"**Anyway**," Hook interrupted before Skywarp could do more than ball his own fists, "who is seeing an adorable little bow on our favorite Cassetticon kitty-cat's neck?"

There was much shifting of feet. Decepticons avoided looking at each other. It was one thing to decide independently that one was delusional and needed to seek repairs; it was a completely different matter to admit to such a weakness in front of a crowd. Insanity was only a problem in the Decepticon ranks if somebody knew about and could therefore take advantage of it.

"Mixmaster poisoned-poisoned the dispenser," Shrapnel threw out eventually, sounding sulky.

"Did not!" Mixmaster shouted from inside the repairbay. "Anyway, I haven't whipped up anything lately that'd make everyone hear bells. Take your accusations and shove 'em up your exhaust pipes, bug!"

"Kinky," someone murmured.

"Stop giving them ideas!" Hook barked over his shoulder.

"Wait. Bells?" That gave everyone out in the hall pause. Wide-opticked looks were exchanged, trying to see who'd heard bells and whether anyone would admit to it.

Hook crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe comfortably as he waited for someone to gather courage and spew information first. A steady, low-voiced rumble of conversation continued from inside, broken periodically by Scrapper's increasingly irate litany of, _"No, no, no — oh, slag, no. Where did you learn how to do this, from a diagram drawn by __**Wheeljack?**__ You're going to need an architect and an astrophysicist to make that work properly, and I don't have the time to — what? No!"_

Finally, Shrapnel decided he'd throw himself on the bomb again. "I didn't hear anything-anything, but Bombshell said he did."

"What? I never - !"

The floodgates opened as all the Decepticons in the hall started talking at once. "Sometimes on Level 5 after my shift, there's some noise."

"Is that what that was?"

"It's high-pitched enough. Too high for anything outside the ship to be hitting the hull. It's gotta be something inside."

"Something small. Thin. Definitely metal. I hadn't thought of a bell…"

"It's been bothering me."

"Yeah, me too. Airvents carry noise like nothing else. Is it coming from up on Level 3? Because I tried to track it down, and I swear it's in one of the common rooms."

"Who uses the rooms on Level 3?"

"I used to store human armaments in some of them, but the Stunticons started messing with my stock."

"Why didn't you just bribe them to cut it out?"

"I did. Who do you think did all the shipping for that lot?"

"There was that one time on the bridge…but that was weeks ago."

"I thought it was Starscream kicking Skywarp in the shin."

"What? I'm not tuned that high! My armor is far too thick to sound that - "

"So you heard it, too?"

" — um. No?"

"Ha!"

"Ow! Hook, make them sto~op!"

"Children," the Constructicon said, six kinds of amused tolerance in his voice, "do be quiet." The Decepticons stopped their milling about(3) and looked at him avidly. Hook took that tone when he was about to drop something blatantly obvious on their heads. It was one of his few amusements in life. He tilted his visor as if chiding them. "You do realize that if you are all seeing and hearing the exact same thing, it's not likely to be a hallucination. Yes?"

"…yes?" Skywarp agreed hesitantly. Beside him, Thundercracker's face contorted in an expression that could have been translated into words as _"D'oh!"_

"So..?" The Constructicon made a sort of _Go on, connect the dots, you morons!_ gesture with one hand.

"So…Ravage is wearing a collar." Skywarp looked confused, but resigned to his fate at the same time. No one else was speaking up, after all. The look on Thundercracker's face had deepened to a kind of horror. The rest of the Decepticons just seemed pole-axed.

"With..?"

"With…an itty-bitty bow on it."

"It is exceptionally charming, isn't it?" Hook's arch look swept over them. "All tiny and frilly, if you're into that kind of thing."

"It's got a bell, too, hasn't it." Skywarp sounded plaintive, because he hated when he had to say the blatantly obvious aloud for everyone else. It always made him sound like a blithering idiot.

"Ding ding, we have a winner!" Mixmaster crowed from inside the repairbay.

"He wasn't talking to you two!" Scrapper snapped. "You're not using that position, and my decision's final. You'll get stuck. Try again!"

Curiosity almost outdid frightened realization for a moment, but the Decepticons lapsed back into fear after a moment's struggle. Ravage with a collar and bow they could endure, because a certain amount of craziness did a mech good. The bell, however, tipped the scales from _Just Smile and Nod_ into the realm of _Stuff Done To Mess With Our Heads._ The bell meant that there had to be a reason for the whole deal, and therein loomed a real chance that the Decepticons might actually understand said reason. Understanding a fellow Decepticon's insanity was one of the more terrifying things that could happen to a mech.

Hey, their own minds were tough enough to navigate. There wasn't enough GPS available in the universe to prepare them for the scary plunge into someone _else's_ head. It was comparable to giving asbestos underwear to someone about to go spelunking into an active volcano; nice thought, but sadly inadequate.

Hook surveyed the lot of them — despondent, shell-shocked, and nervous - and nodded briskly. "My work here is done."

The door closed behind him. Some wise-aft had carved _Help Wanted_ on it.

It was either a plea or an observation.

**#2 **

For all the Decepticons' mass hyper-awareness of Ravage's choice of accessory, nobody said a word to the jaguar. That just wasn't how things were done on in the Decepticons. Outright asking about something would be admitting to not being fully aware of the situation. That would be a weakness. Such weaknesses were openings for mockery and exploitation by others, even if the others were just as ignorant.

It would be one thing if any of them were confident enough about the situation to come out and tease the Cassetticon, but they weren't. The technimal continued to stalk through the shadows of the base with an eerie silence bizarrely at odds with his newly-beribboned look. The only difference was the occasional jingle that filtered down through the airducts. The mysterious bell haunted Level 3 in particular, but Skywarp could have sworn he'd heard it mid-shift on the bridge. The Insecticons tried spying on the spy for three days straight but heard nothing; on the fourth day they found they'd been watching Soundwave's chest long after Ravage had left the base on a mission, so that didn't say much about their spying abilities. Blast Off got one look at Ravage's pretty bow, turned on a thruster, and hadn't come down from orbit since. Jingling at the time or not, it was still just...wrong. Decepticon spies should not wear bows!

All around base, consensus was that Ravage wore the thing on purpose. That was the only thing the Decepticons agreed upon about it. The assumption, therefore, was that they were all completely missing something about the collar. Something really important, if Ravage failed to react to wearing it. Something they really needed to discover before trying to use it against him. Nobody wanted to go into verbal sniping against a _spy_ with weaponry - even of the information variety - half-loaded and misaimed.

Since every Decepticon was so concerned with covering his own aft, what everyone failed to realize in the scramble was that...nobody knew. No one at all. Not a single mech engaged in the whispered inquiries had a clue as to why Ravage had suddenly taken to jingling his way through the _Victory_'s halls. That cluelessness went up to and included Megatron, although he hadn't been part of the rush to the repairbay. Megatron simply had ironclad self-control and zero self-doubt. His belief in his own sanity was strong enough that he could allow Ravage to…deviate.

In reality, Megatron was Lord Commander over an army of crazy mechs on a good day. Unlike most of the truly twitchy in the ranks, however, the technimal's loyalty was unquestionable. His competence couldn't be doubted. The Lord Commander might have wondered about that last if he hadn't witnessed for himself the way the noise from the technimal's little bell cut off like a thrown switch when Ravage wished to move silently. In a strange way, the bell even added to Megatron's pride in Special Operations.

Now _that_ was a talented Decepticon spy(4).

Megatron still didn't understand what Ravage was doing, but he wasn't willing to admit it, either. Alright, that brought into play a fairly common bit of Decepticon misdirection, a.k.a. philosophy: "If at first you don't succeed... cheat. Repeat until caught. Then lie."

So when Starscream delicately probed for information, Megatron pretended to know what Ravage was about. When his Second in Command demanded more information, the Decepticon Lord Commander waved him away with the assurance that everything was going according to plan. What the plan was, he refused to tell Starscream. Because it wasn't Starscream's business. He'd tell him when everything had fallen into place.

Since a lack of information was a weakness, Starscream, in turn, pretended that — of course! — Ravage's belled, bowed collar was part of the latest Decepticon ploy, which he — of course! — knew all about. Soundwave inwardly doubted the flyer's loud claims, but he remained at his most calmly inscrutable. The tapedeck had been putting off actually requesting information from Ravage in the hopes of finding out by himself, and now he'd feel a fool if he had to ask his own Cassetticon about what Megatron and Starscream already knew.

Soundwave's lack of denial or agreement led Skywarp to brush off the other jets' gossip (sorry: "information gathering sessions"), claiming that Starscream had confided in him. Ravage's collar was nothing important. But! It related to the western-most oil dig in Siberia somehow, and who cared about that?

Skywarp's embellishment got to Ramjet, who of course was talking to Brawl because trying to scandalize Scrapper wasn't the only thing they did together. Once Brawl knew, Swindle found out. Between Skywarp and Swindle, however, the tale had grown to Ravage assuming control of the entire output of the Siberian oilfield operation. Because Swindle liked to be friends with the 'in' mechs among command posts, he found time in his busy conmech schedule to track down the technimal Cassetticon — much to Swindle's frustration, that mission was harder than it sounded, for all that he was searching for a jaguar wearing a fragging _bell _- and insinuate that if Ravage needed anything, anything at all, Swindle was at his service.

Somewhat to the mild surprise of both of them, Ravage actually wanted help with something.

When the out-of-control spaghetti-knots of misinformation writhing through the Decepticons eventually led to the Autobots capturing Ravage, Megatron was able to claim that it had all been part of his plan. Which, by then, he'd thought up and implemented(6) with the help of the Constructicons. They actually _did_ know what was going on but weren't talking. That annoyed Megatron to no end, but he couldn't shake Hook until answers popped out without admitting that he himself had been lying all along about knowing anything. That would mess with his omniscient leader image (no, not the lying part - the ignorance part) unforgivably.

Obviously, this was all Starscream's fault. Megatron hadn't figured out quite how, yet, but he had every confidence his treasonous Air Commander was to blame somehow.

Anyway, while the various kerfluffles were happening at the bottom of the ocean and in the Autobot base (depending on which tangled thread of drama you were following at any one moment), Swindle was busy negotiating a favor with Reflector's components. It wasn't a big favor. A minor irritant, but nothing Reflector didn't put up with on a regular basis anyway. Being promised the opportunity to get a picture of Ravage in his collar was enough of a bribe. Everyone remained vaguely ashamed of the fact that they found the jaguar entirely too cute while wearing it. Decepticons would pay for the picture, and pay more for Reflector to forget that they'd bought it.

By the time Ravage returned to base, Reflector's components were grumpily waiting on the _Victory_'s bridge during their off-duty shift. They gave the technimal a slightly resentful look — oh, the things they went through for a decent picture! — and followed him off the bridge after Ravage finished reporting. Starscream, Megatron, and Soundwave watched them go. Not one of them asked where the camera and the Cassetticon were going. The mystery of the collar seemed to have been solved; Ravage's report had revealed part of the reason behind its purpose, not that anyone was going to admit they hadn't known in the first place. A nefarious escape tool? Intriguing.

…although that still didn't explain why Hook had made the collar in the first place.

Curiosity hadn't killed the cat yet, but some of the Decepticons were just dying to know.

**#3 **

"...I see." Megatron steepled his fingers, then abandoned the pose to stare quizzically at Vortex. "I don't, actually. No. You want to assign the Stunticons, ah," he paused, expression a little confused as he tried to parse the concept into military terms, "auxiliary team members. Is that correct?"

Vortex nodded. "Close enough, yeah." He leaned forward on his feet, the very image of a concerned psychologist except for the restrained sense of glee. It was hard to seem solemn - or legitimate, for that matter - when he was exercising his Hook-given right to mess with the minds of fellow Decepticons. Megatron wondered why he bothered to try. Trying to appear innocent never worked for Decepticons. "They need friends."

"Friends." Starscream's question fell flat as Wily E. Coyote on the pavement. The jet shifted behind Megatron's shoulder, and the Lord Commander exchanged wary looks with him in a quick glance over his shoulder. They weren't sure where this was going, but they knew they probably weren't going to like it(7).

The nodding took an earnest edge directly countered by the evil amusement coloring Vortex' tone. He was trying to pull off a _Concerned Comrade_ act and was playing _Dr. Mengele_ instead. "They're not socializing voluntarily. If they don't socialize, they won't mature. As individuals, it'll just stunt their mental growth. Their combat abilities, too, if I'm any judge." He shrugged, rotors giving one satisfied _whrr_ before stopping again. "They'll probably die quicker." There was an unspoken _"No big loss!"_ tacked onto the end of that statement. "The worrying part is that so long as they're still stuck in youngling mindsets, Menasor is, too. He's unstable enough, mentally. The longer the Stunticons are allowed to keep to themselves, the worse Menasor's behavior will get, and the harder it'll be to break them of their, er, individual quirks."

That was a polite way of phrasing what the other Decepticons called the separate buckets o' crazy that made up the individual Stunticon members. Megatron let his mouth twist in distaste. While the other four Stunticons kept well out of his way, he had to deal with the Stunticon team leader enough that he knew exactly what Vortex was referring to. Motormaster was an egotistical muscle-head with a crippling self-doubt underlying his every move. It caused him to go to extreme lengths for Megatron's approval. If the semi was half as confident in his proclaimed title of 'King of the Road,' he wouldn't _need_ Megatron's approval that way.

Although, from what Vortex reported, that could be bleeding over from one of the other Stunticon's particular errors. Insecurity and paranoia seemed one of their special problems, come to think of it.

"This is ridiculous," his Second in Command said shrilly, waving one hand to illustrate just how ridiculous it was. Or to sketch out the inner workings of a whale; the gesture flailed rather unclearly. "They're Decepticons, not - not human **infants**. They'll either adapt to fighting or die from it, and good riddance if they do get themselves offed!"

"With all due respect," insinuating that no respect was due, of course, "unlike **some** mechs I could name, the Stunticons aren't dumb. They're just young!"

The jet narrowed his optics at the smug helicopter as if trying to discern the Combaticon's angle by the power of glaring alone. "I don't know what you think you can get from handicapping the - " He broke off as Megatron raised a hand to interrupt.

A bad-tempered glare of his own made the jet subside, if unhappily. Starscream was impetuous, but most of the time he was also firmly under Megatron's control. The Lord Commander didn't need Vortex riling up the Air Commander today. It did seem to be a specialty of the Combaticons to ruffle Starscream's wings, but personal amusement had to wait until business was finished. No matter how funny Megatron found jet-baiting to be usually, he had more important matters to deal with today than watching his SiC and impromptu base psychologist try to verbally kill each other.

The issue here, so far as Megatron was following things, was relatively simple. The Stunticons were too young to function on their own yet, and they required some guidance. Fine. It wasn't a normal part of base life, but the Decepticons would adapt. The alternative was to stand by and let Menasor degenerate, and the gestalt was far too important to the war effort.

However, it seemed that Starscream was too close to the problem to properly see it. Starscream _understood_ Motormaster trying to prove himself and his team, but that didn't mean the jet _approved_ of the aft-head's over-the-top attempts at garnering Megatron's attention. If the jet had stopped to look at the situation with a level head, Megatron privately thought that he'd see that he and Motormaster had more in common than either would like. But Starscream stubbornly thought that he didn't have to prove himself. He was the Prince of Vos, the acknowledged ruler of the skies, and he needed no one else to recognize that obvious fact!

Ruler of the skies, meet King of the Road. Pot, meet kettle. Black? Black. Really, black? Oh, yes indeed: black.

Megatron occasionally had the nagging feeling that all of his warriors were little glitchmice with the suicidal need to have the biggest, baddest predator around watch them pull their newest bout of stupidity. _Lookit meeeeee, boss! Me!_ It had been handy when he'd been assembling his army. It had almost been too easy, tempting the bored and uncertain with a bit of danger. Stroke an ego there, listen attentively there, and the big bad caninandroid could eat them right up. Eat them up, train them down, and set them loose on the Autobots as the regurgitated children of violence.

For the most part, it had worked. Starscream could charm the bolts out of the walls and destroy an enemy base with nothing more than his onboard arsenal and wicked wits. That didn't stop the jet from reverting to an insecure mech sometimes. Usually at the worst of all times, too. Multiply that by the entire Decepticon Elite, divided by varying amounts of self-confidence and self-control, and Megatron was Lord Commander of a kindergarten some days. Toddlers with big guns and comparable egos.

Megatron really did not need this slag right now. One problem at a time.

Vortex had gone still and quiet before him, programmed loyalty and common sense freezing even his rotors. Megatron eyed him with scant favor; he disliked bearers of bad news who _enjoyed_ delivery. With a shrug of one massive shoulder, the silver mech turned to dismiss Starscream from the discussion entirely -

- only to find that his Second in Command had already flounced off. He had relocated to the Communications console and seemed to be listening to Ravage report to Soundwave. Megatron looked at the small gathering with the world's blankest expression, giving no hint of surprise or relief(8). The technimal was sitting on the console in front of Soundwave, one forepaw playing with the belled collar on his neck while the other rested on one of the small download datasticks the Cassetticons favored using for information-heavy reports. Soundwave was apparently scrolling through the information already, but Starscream had casually leaned one arm on the back of the Communication Officer's chair as he listened to Ravage. It was a picture of Decepticon efficiency.

It was a misleading picture. Nothing in the ranks ever worked that well. Even as Megatron watched, the Air Commander reached out and delicately _ting_ed the Cassetticon's bell. Ravage rose to stretch kinked cables, hindlegs and tail straight up and forelegs out, sharp front claws working mischievously on the keys Soundwave was trying to use. The Communication Officer plucked the jaguar from the console with the long-suffering patience of a mech who knew a losing battle when he saw it. The Cassetticon hung from his Cassette-host's hands and shook his head hard enough to send the bell into a clamor of jingling. Soundwave didn't even bother standing up; he transferred the technimal to one hand and shoved Ravage at Starscream's cockpit. Starscream straightened in surprise, arms automatically catching the Cassetticon. Soundwave turned back to his work as Air Commander and technimal gave each other appraising looks. A low growl and answering high-pitched chuckle boded ill for Megatron's peace of mind.

"Hmm." Megatron shook the matter from the forefront of his mind, turning his formidable attention back to Vortex. The helicopter had been watching the three mechs over by Communications as well, but he snapped back around when Megatron's optics lit upon him with an almost physical force. "Friends, you say."

"Uhh...ah, yeah." Vortex's visor popped through reset in three different phases, left to right, making it look like a human lightshow instead of a hardware error-check. "It's socialization in a context they understand. Get them used to working with the rest of us under orders, and they won't find it so hard to make the change to off-shift mingling. Things like," his rotors shrugged, _whrr whrrrr_, "sparring practice. Getting know how the rest of us fight together and trying to fit into the tactics instead of just plunging through blindly. Casual conversation would be a refreshing change." The helicopter ducked his head, muttering a comment Megatron may not have been supposed to hear, "It's costing me way too much in high grade to pry their vocalizers open right now. My job sucks exhaust fumes."

"Interesting you should say that," Starscream said from behind Vortex, and Megatron might have warned the helicopter but he had his own juvenile sense of humor to indulge. Vortex jumped like a petrorabbit. Starscream's hand clamped down on one rotor before the assembly could kick into emergency escape protocols, I.e. _Starscream is behind you, fly awaaaaaaay._ "It seems that Vortex here," the jet silkily reported, other hand snaking through the rotors to seize a shoulder, "has not been doing his assigned duties so much as," he grinned, all satisfaction and spite, "taking credit for work already done."

Vortex's visor darted around the room, trying to find a way out. "I don't know what you're talking about!"

Without a whisper of sound, night-black and silver metal relocated from Starscream to the chopper's free shoulder. Only once Vortex's head whipped around did Ravage let the bell jingle again. Megatron had no idea how Ravage managed to make a bell sound sinister, but Vortex, visor to optics with the tiny technimal, was quite clearly the intimidated one. Starscream's hands tightened enough to make metal squeal, and Ravage peeled his lip up to show a very sharp fang. He did resemble Earth jaguars in every way the alt-mode programs could change: retractable claws, dental molds, and a tendency toward playing with his prey.

"Er. Well, I. Plans might be based on. Off. Others." _Knead knead knead_ went Ravage's claws as he made himself comfortable. "Ow, ow, ow, alright already! I've been watching Ravage, and he has some ideas!" Newly-perforated armor leaked fluids, coating the ragged edges. Ravage curled up on the bed of energon, dangerously close to the main linkages exposed on Vortex's unarmored throat. Helm and mask were no help at this range if the technimal chose to attack. The Combaticon shivered, unable to defend himself against any of it, and only an idiot wouldn't know about Vortex's fetish for powerplay. Ravage had the larger mech exactly where he wanted to be. "I didn't - !" _Despite_ his protests. Pride, after all. The Cassetticon reached out and let one claw snag, sna_aaaaahfraggit!_ag, and Vortex slumped in Starscream's hands, defeated.

"He's been working with the Stunticons on his own," Vortex admitted in the direction of the floor. "Reflector spends one shift every three days paired up with Breakdown, and DeadEnd's been loaned to Tactical as a contingency planner. Drag Strip is…" He hesitated, half-looking out of the corner of his visor at Ravage in question. "I'm not sure. He's been assigned to Communications a lot."

"Drag Strip: consultant for Shockwave," Soundwave put in, sounding as unflappable as ever. "Stunticon's turn of phrase is useful for public relations in current intergalactic negotiations on Cybertron. Commentary on victories has recast Decepticon conquest in positive light."

"That makes sense," Vortex said slowly, seeming to work out the logic as he spoke. "So the others — "

"— may settle down when they are socialized properly." Starscream loosened his grip and instead slung an arm around Vortex's shoulders like a vise. The Air Commander beamed at Megatron like he'd personally won the war. "Another idea proposed first by Ravage, I might add. After due consideration, however, I believe I have the perfect choice for auxiliary member assignment to the Stunticons! As Vortex pointed out," Vortex looked as though pointing things out was recent history he'd rather everyone forgot, "there are **some** mechs we could name who don't have youth an excuse for their stupidity. Or as I'd rather phrase it: 'socially backward actions.'" Starscream let go of the helicopter in order to lightly smack him upside the helm. Vortex had frozen in a flinch, seeing the orders coming and already knowing how his team was going to react. "I think Motormaster and Onslaught will get along just fine, don't you? And you'll have that much more time to work with Wildrider one-on-one."

"Erk," Vortex said, somewhat less-than-intelligently.

Megatron distantly wished he felt surprised by any of this. He looked over at Soundwave, and then at Ravage laying there on Vortex's shoulder like the cat who'd caught the glitchmouse. Sometimes, the big bad predator had well-trained minions to do his work for him.

"I see," the Lord Commander said. And this time, he really did.

**#4 **

Perhaps the oddest thing among all the odd things associated with the collar was that Ravage truly didn't mind.

Soundwave had assigned him to monitor the new combiner team, and he'd approached the assignment with the same curt efficiency he did every mission. There had been a slight hint of dread for what insanity these newbies would pull out of the base walls, yes, but for the most part, Ravage was accustomed to the wide spectrum of crazy that Decepticons sported. Since there was no level of covert observation required, he'd decided the best course of action was to introduce himself to the Stunticons as an ally and work from there.

Things hadn't exactly gone as planned.

The Stunticons were, well, stunted. Emotionally, of course, because they were young and violent. However, their minds hadn't had time to acquire situational awareness, either. They were a group of Cybertronians with limited information dropped onto a planet teeming with organic beings. Talking, typing, _transmitting_ sentient creatures with almost infectious philosophies of living, viral train-wrecks of thought, and styles that defied Cybertronian common sense. The Stunticons, not knowing any better, took it all in. Lacking censors or guidelines, their gestalt links traded and affirmed bonds of underlying interests and beliefs that nobody but nobody had thought to keep an optic on.

For the most part, it hadn't mattered. Humans were fundamentally weird aliens that the Stunticons hadn't had the time or inclination to get close to. On the other hand, they shared living space with a few dozen Elite Decepticons from whom their experience-starved subprograms immediately began gleaning routine information. That was all well and good. Left on their own, the Stunticons might have enough stimuli to adapt to life in the Decepticons as warped individuals and a conglomerate with basic functionality.

Ravage's job was to watch and make sure they didn't get any funny ideas about Autobots or humans in the meantime. Later, it would become Vortex's job to prod their underdeveloped selves toward maturity. Somewhere in between those jobs came the simple fact that the Stunticons had some thoughts of their own.

Forcing a group of violently psychotic younglings to merge into a war machine had made them agree on some things _real_ quick, just to avoid tearing themselves to pieces. Menasor was a team dynamic, like it or not, and they couldn't ignore that. For that most part, the agreements were positive changes. Unfortunately, one of the things decided by the merge had been, something learnt from the humans.

The Stunticons liked cats. No, not 'like.' They _loved_ cats(9).

Ravage discovered this fact when the door to the Stunticons' new quarters opened to his override - and he was immediately scooped up off the floor and into Dead End's arms. "I am seeing things. Someone call for the Constructions." The new Decepticon looked glumly down at the startled technimal and ran a finger down the cat's back. "Although it's probably too late to save my damaged processor."

"Kitty!" Breakdown barreled into his gestaltmate and reached grabby hands for Ravage. "Give him here! Oh, don't look at me that way. I'll take care of you, yes I will…d'aaaaw."

"A cat? Here?" Drag Strip appeared in the common room as if by magic. "Mine."

"No way!" Wildrider peered over the closest shoulder, optics bright with fascination. "Whoa — way. No way is that so way as that way."

"Back off, he's mine!"

"Don't be that way!"

"I'll be any way I want to if you don't get out of my way!"

Ravage had been too surprised to protest as they passed him around, going from hands to arms to shoulders. Four pairs of hands constantly _touched_ him in ways that only Soundwave - and occasionally Megatron - had previously dared. Despite the arguing, the Stunticons were roughly gentle as they stroked over his audios ("Lookit the bitty receivers! Think he gets cable?") and fondled his missile launchers ("Ha! A Decepti-kitty! Is that cool or what?"). The constant verbal barrage of bickering was directly contradicted by nonstop pleasant physical sensation, and he only recovered his equilibrium when Motormaster stormed out into the common room like a deep-voiced harbinger of destruction.

"**What** are you **idiots** going on about out — " The Stunticon leader came to an abrupt halt, stopping in his tracks when Drag Strip whipped around with an armful of Cassetticon jaguar. The four smaller Decepticons stared up at their leader in fear, Drag Strip's hands clutching the cat as if to protect him. The tiny technimal sat up, drawing on reserves of dignity untapped in order to face down the looming tyrant of the combiner team —

- who bent down to look him in the face, a helplessly delighted look obliterating the rage like it had never been. "Where the **frag** did you morons get him? A mechanical cat? This is even better than stealing the tigers from the San Diego Zoo and outfitting them with lasers!" A hand bigger than Soundwave's took the Cassetticon from Drag Strip's unresisting arms and held him up for inspection with the unexpected tenderness of a semi-truck transporting Faberge eggs. "Less chance of Lord Megatron turning the idea down, too…whose is he?"

The Stunticons started chattering again, this time with Ravage held firmly in Motormaster's lap as the Stunticon claimed the best seat at the battered common room table. It…was not as uncomfortable as one might think. In fact, the Decepticon faction's lead spy was having difficulty doing more to resist than turning over to let surprisingly talented fingers tickle his underbelly.

It was at that point that Ravage gave up hope of regaining control of the situation and just called for Soundwave to come get him. A different plan was required.

Soundwave had explained to the newbie Decepticons in a few short words about his various technimal Cassetticons. The Stunticons as a whole had been mortified to learn that they had been cuddling a superior in the ranks. Motormaster in particular had been humiliated by the implied scolding coming from their Lord Commander's Communications Officer, and he'd taken it out on his team. Ravage had shaken it off as another strange wartime experience and thought it a lesson learned by all.

But…the Stunticons _really_ liked cats.

Ravage noticed the hands that strayed in his direction, although they were jerked back with wistful expressions if he turned to look. Dead End moped more than usual around him. Wildrider squeaked nonsense frequently upon spotting him, fists held to wide grin as if trying to contain sheer joy. Breakdown jumped, spooked, when Ravage caught him staring. Drag Strip made it into a game of drive-bys, competing to see which was faster: his wheels getting closer or Ravage's reflexes getting away. Motormaster just brooded and beat on his team for doing what he had too much pride to do.

It was endearingly bizarre. It was rapidly becoming a frustration instead of amusement. There was only so much (badly) covert attention a spy could tolerate, and the Stunticons' collective stalker-like behavior was really pushing it. Ravage came to dread returning to base after missions, just because he could think of no easy solution to the problem. Problem compounded on problem as, by this time, he'd detected the individual glitches among the younglings that would soon ingrain permanently if someone didn't forced the Stunticons out of their self-imposed team isolation. Consulting with Soundwave produced no answers. Going to the Constructicons got Vortex assigned to psychologist duty, which would probably cause more issues in the long run than he cured. Nobody was really _doing_ anything, and the situation was becoming quite pathetic.

Having no other choice, Ravage decided to approach the problem directly. He went to the source. He overrode the Stunticons' door code, let himself in, and jumped right onto the table in the middle of what looked like a roleplaying game involving a giant Monopoly board and about eighty Hot Wheels cars arranged in esoteric formations on Park Place.

Silence.

Breakdown dropped a handful of fake money and hotels. Drag Strip (who was winning, if it could be called that) slid his chair slowly back from the table. Dead End stopped counting his pile of fake money into Breakdown's growing pile of fake money — which was now on the floor, anyway — to eye the jaguar uneasily. Wildrider, who was on the floor and thus suddenly richer, poked his head into view before retreating back beneath the table to hide. Also to hoard his new-found, ill-gotten wealth.

They all stared at Ravage wordlessly for a solid three minutes. Ravage sat there and looked back. Going in without a much of an initial plan required making it up as he went, and he had no idea where he was going, so making it up had stalled. He wanted them to make the first move. At least then he'd know which way to dodge.

"Kitty," Breakdown finally peeped, half-cringing in a way that suggested Motormaster was going to appear out of nowhere to smack him into the wall for saying it. The other Stunticons hissed through their intakes.

"I," Ravage said before anyone could scramble for an apology or insult, "am not a kitty."

Dead End toyed with the fake bills in his hand, all of his attention seemingly riveted by the bright colors. "We know."

"It's kind of obvious." Even Drag Strip seemed subdued. Motormaster had not been pleased with his team's continued fixation, apparently. "What with the talking and all. Cats don't typically talk." Wildrider contributed nothing more than a hysterical giggle that may have had a smothered mention of Disney buried in it.

"Good." Ravage nodded, dignified and sleek as only a cat could be under such circumstances, and got up to pick his way across the gameboard to the nearest hand. It was Breakdown's, and the Stunticon seemed too petrified to move it from the table as Ravage curled up close enough to brush against it. The technimal rested his jaw on one foreleg and dimmed his optics. "What is the point of this game?"

"Uh…"

Silence gradually gave way in blurts and starts and stammers to awkward attempts to explain a game that only Stunticons could have invented. Explanations were interrupted to explain further or argue about an interpretation. Attention became diverted. The Hot Wheels parking points were introduced, and around then Breakdown noticed that Wildrider had somehow ended up with all his cash. Fake or not, such thievery could not be tolerated. The table nearly went end-over-end when Breakdown grabbed Wildrider by one leg and pulled. Dead End sighed, holding the table down with both hands, and proposed trading a hotel for car shipping via the Railroad to Drag Strip. They settled down for some serious bargaining while Breakdown pelted Wildrider with fuzzy dice until the darker Stunticon surrendered the money. Ravage watched it all with some amusement and more confusion. This was harder to understand (if potentially less lethal) than Skywarp's free-for-all freefall version of Twister, and that was saying something!

Somewhere around trying to pin down the reasons for the rule behind passing Go and collecting 200 MPH, all four Stunticon cars were talking over and around each other, Wildrider was laughing louder than even Drag Strip's yelling, and Breakdown had absentmindedly begun tweaking Ravage's audio receivers. None of them were even paying attention to the cat in their midst. Ravage had accomplished what only the Decepticons' best spy could have done: he had disappeared in plain sight.

That was about when Motormaster burst into the common room, pumped with macho-truckdom(10) and fresh from a planning session with none other than the Lord Commander himself. The other Stunticons looked up without much interest, and Motormaster opened his mouth to roar angrily at them — and fell over his own two feet when he spotted Ravage. The Cassetticon was half-covered by Dead End's hand as the gloomy mech consoled himself over inevitable loss in the game by petting him.

Motormaster hit the floor face-first with a _Ka-WHUMP-clang!_ that made the table dance. Drag Strip and Wildrider squawked and grabbed for the gameboard while Breakdown went over backward in his chair — he'd been balancing it on two legs while checking the room for hidden cameras — and Dead End dully looked down at their fallen team leader. Ravage rose to all four feet and stretched luxuriously, feeling like his cables had undergone an in-depth retrofit from a professional maintenance mech. He could get used to this level of pampering.

The three Stunticons still at the table blinked at him owlishly as if just remembering he was there as the Cassetticon jumped down from the table and sauntered over to where Motormaster lay groaning. "Kill you **all**," the truck muttered as he pushed himself up to sit on his heels and shake his head.

Ravage boldly climbed into the Stunticon leader's lap and curled up.

Motormaster just about fell back over. "**What** in the name of Nascar are you - !" It wasn't quite a natural sound, but Ravage managed to run his cassette spools roughly enough to approximate a purr. "You - !" _Prrr prr prrrrr_ came from the cat. No, Motormaster had to remember that this was the fiercely intelligent spy Cassetticon technimal who could infiltrate Schrodinger's Box if given half a chance. "**You - !**" _Prrrrrrrrr_. "You can't — " He glanced from jaguar to the other Stunticons, who were no help whatsoever. " — Soundwave will — " Red optics looked up at him as innocently as a kitten from the Pit: _Prrrrowr?_ " — I'm not — you're - _**fine**_."

Motormaster gave up on coherence and just pet him. Far be it from him to try and deny a Decepti-kitty what he obviously wanted, even if they all knew better than to call Ravage any form of 'kitty.'

As far as plans went, this one hadn't turned out half-bad. Ravage slitted his optics and rolled over to plot some more. Meddling in the affairs of a combiner team could be surprisingly rewarding, and in this case, he got five personal masseuses willing to drop everything to bend to his will. Not a bad thing, in his opinion.

In return, of course, there was the small matter of the collar. Ravage didn't mind it all that much, although Hook gave him a pitying look when he handed the completed, frilly accessory over to Drag Strip. The technimal didn't move from his lazy sprawl on top of Motormaster's head-shield. Instead, Ravage lit one optic dimly to watch the Constructicon and dismiss the pity, and then shut it off again.

"Check it out!" Drag Strip exclaimed, puffed up with how awesome the collar — his idea, of course — had come out. "It even color-matches!" The bow had to match his paintjob; it had been Hook's design, but the Stunticons had decided on the colors. Drag Strip had given them no peace until they'd agreed on the gold bow.

"It won't last," Dead End said gloomily. "Gold is too fragile."

"Life is too fragile, in your book," Wildrider said sagely. He ruined what could have been words of wisdom by going on to list everything in life that Dead End found too fragile. " — chicken eggs, plasterboard, sprinkles, desks, clouds, armor — "

Motormaster smacked them both into opposite walls. "Shut it!"

Ravage ignored the byplay and let Drag Strip coax him down from atop Motormaster's head to put the…thing…on him. Personally, the Cassetticon was more wryly amused than anything at the lengths the Stunticons had gone to turn something the whole team agreed was 'cute' into a useful escape tool. Dead End had presented the idea to him that way, emphasizing the lockpicks and hidden chemicals over and over again before hesitantly mentioning what shape this escape tool would be in. The shape Stunticons wanted. Then he'd quickly gone back to talking about how having a 'just in case' collar could be a good idea in case of capture, which would happen eventually as it was only a matter of time until the Autobots got them all, and —

Ravage had only stared in the implacable way of cats and spies, making Dead End squirm uncomfortably as the Stunticon talked himself into the same corner he always got stuck in: " — not that it matters, because we're all going to die." Strangely dismayed by his logic for once, Dead End finally ran out of words and sat in a depressed huddle at the table. He avoided looking at the technimal. The other Stunticons had elected him to persuade Ravage into wearing the collar they'd bought at quite a bit of expense from Hook, but he could have predicted that he'd fail.

"If I agrrree to this," Ravage said softly, rolling his 'R's because he knew the Stunticons thought it was adorable, "you will take the duty shifts in Tactical."

"…yes?"

"Verrry well."

The bell turned out to be a challenge, and an entertaining one at that. Ravage liked challenges. He liked challenges that Autobot Special Operations choked on even more. Besides, wearing the collar was well worth the bother since it coerced Dead End into Tactical, where his pessimistic outlook on, well, _everything_ turned into an asset when poking holes in proposed plans. Agreeing to pose for pictures in the slagging thing also exposed Breakdown to Reflector, as Ravage utterly refused to be caught on film unless Breakdown was in the background. It was a small crack in the Stunticon's paranoia (Yes, they are really watching you, but they're on your side. Now hold still!), but one that Ravage was determined to work on. Drag Strip had been easy enough to talk into speaking with Shockwave, and Ravage had been pleased to find that Shockwave understood youngling mentalities better than most Decepticons on Earth.

There were more things that the Stunticons had to do, many of which Ravage would have to somehow force them into doing. Finding something to temper Wildrider's hyperactive psychosis frustrated his best efforts. Leading the yellow Stunticon on a merry chase through the base trying to find the jingling bell on his collar kept the nutjob occupied for the time being, at least. Bending Motormaster to his will wasn't easy, either, even granted the supreme power of curling into a physically-improbable donut shape on his back the floor, exposing his belly like a siren song of temptation.

It was a difficult job, and one that not many of the other Decepticons understood. Even Hook had expressed doubt one day when Ravage had gone in to check the fit of the collar. In his best neutral _The Only Reason I'm Speaking With You Is Because It's My Duty_ voice, the Constructicon had asked, "Do you know what you're getting into?"

Ravage had done him the honor of gravely considering the question. After a few minutes of reflection, the Cassetticon bent nearly double to scratch with one hindpaw at the bow, resettling it. "No. I've never had one pet, much less five." He straightened and heaved air through his intakes in a resigned manner. "But what else could I do but adopt them? They were just so pathetic on their own."

Hook watched him jump off the table and trot out the door, bell jingling all the way, and could think of no helpful response to that.

But, then again, not many Decepticons went to the repairbay for _help_.

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**Footnotes**

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><p>(1)Jazz totally did not count. Although so far as diversionary tactics went, having a notorious Autobot saboteur show up in the spacebridge on Cybertron toting a brilliant, red neon sign blinking <em>Eat At Joe's!<em> had worked pretty spectacularly. Shockwave had stood staring in the middle of his tower for about 3 breems, unable to process the light show that made the arrow appear to curve down to point directly at the Autobot as he boldly hacked into the Decepticon systems.

(2)Once Astrotrain and Blitzwing tentatively revealed their individual hallucinations to each other and found — much to their relief — that their insanity was apparently mutual, they theorized it was small and just flat enough to allow Ravage to transform. Soundwave was made slightly paranoid in the following week as the theory spread and various Decepticons attempted to be sneaky while avidly watching for him to eject or accept his jaguar Cassetticon.

(3)They had a good gossip session going on at that point, to be honest, but Decepticons don't gossip. Sort of how the word of Brawl and Ramjet's renewed perversions wouldn't be passed by word-of-mouth until everybody knew about it. That would be plebian. Instead, the Decepticons were participating in an excited exchange of information with intent to destroy, delight, despoil, deny, deprive, or desecrate. Or whatever slightly-more-dignified Decepticon variation of the word 'gossip' they could tell themselves they were doing.

(4)Six days later, the Autobot Special Operations team was thrown into a jealous tizzy when Ravage savagely shook his _iddy-biddy widdle bewwy-wewwy, d'awww!_ through the cell bars at them. The point was well taken; the Cassetticon had been captured by accident (Gears, in the common room, with a candlestick), not because of anyone hearing the bell. That was how good Ravage was. Since the spirit of _Anything you can do, I can do Better!_ was alive and kicking between Decepticon and Autobot Special Ops, Ravage had gleefully warned Soundwave afterward to listen carefully for spies wearing jangly things(5).

(5)The 'afterward' had come about because the Autobots had been so caught up in taunting Ravage over his cutesy collar that they'd utterly missed that the gold bow had three lockpicks carefully stitched among its soft metal pleats, and the bell clapper was actually filled with enough metal oxide to create a concentrated thermite reaction. Hook had outdone himself on the collar, titling the final product _Escape Art_.

(6)The Decepticons raided 114 appliance stores while the Autobots were distracted by Ravage. 645 Whirlpool washing machines later, and the Constructicons began sucking oil tankers down to the ocean floor to be drained. Mirage was almost unable to stop the machines and save the crews' lives because Soundwave heard him coming. Who knew that moving smoothly enough to not chime a bell was so _difficult?_

(7)Anything proposed by the Combaticons always required the command staff to show a united front. Onslaught alone was dangerous, loyalty programming or no, and Vortex thought word-weaseling was a game. Megatron and Starscream had been yelling at each other over the latest energy-gathering plan, as per usual, when Vortex had logged into the bridge-shift and blipped a scheduling request at Soundwave. The Communication Officer had politely waited for a pause in the insultfest — a surprisingly effective method of planning among the Decepticons, believe it or not — and informed them of the new appointment. As always, that had prompted an amazing 180 degree turn in attitude between Lord Commander and Second in Command. They met Vortex's arrival with no evidence that, moments earlier, Starscream had been detailing Megatron's genealogy without once mentioning anything sentient while Megatron talked trash about the jet's abilities as Air Commander.

(8)No tantrum? Well, that was a relief. Starscream made creatures with tentacles seem stand-offish on his clingy days. Which…was the kind of thought that Megatron really didn't need running through his head at any time. Earth had done strange things to Decepticon minds, and Megatron blamed Japan specifically for a lot of the weirder developments lately.

(9)'Love' as said by Breakdown, with a few 'U's and an 'R' added for extra emphasis: _Luuuuuurve._ Motormaster even had mudflaps that proclaimed, "I brake for pussy." He hadn't just gotten them to skeeve off Optimus Prime. He once caused a 13-car pile-up when he'd jackknifed across three lanes of traffic braking for a kitten on the freeway. There had been 6 hospitalizations and 2 deaths, but the cat escaped unscathed.

(10)This was actually a term borrowed from the Autobots, as the Decepticons had never encountered the generalized phenomenon of large trucks in the ranks before. They'd always assumed it was just a Long Haul-specific thing until Motormaster came along. Apparently, the bigger the trailer, the bigger the need for total dominion via overwhelming truckdom vibes. Who knew?


	7. Always the Wrong Lid

"_An alien look at human racism, and bodily fluids."_

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

**Title: ** Always the Wrong Lid

**Warning: ** An alien look at human racism, and bodily fluids.

**Rating: **PG, just in case someone is offended by said bodily fluids.

**Continuity:** G1, Footnotes AU

**Characters:** Chip Chase, Skywarp, Reflector, Thundercracker, Soundwave, Shockwave

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **_"Setting - hostage situation."_

**[* * * * *]**

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><p>Humanity was a remarkably adaptable race. Scarily so, to those Autobots who paid attention to the larger picture. The rest of the Autobots saw the small social circle of those humans who directly associated with them instead of the planet entire, but some of the Autobots took notice of human kind in general.<p>

The little creatures came in a generic form, usually within a baseline size and shape, and limited by climate and genetics to certain colors and form. Women were endlessly fascinating to the Autobots who bothered to study them, as were all cultures where both genders were allowed makeup or hair coloration or styling. The idea of permanent forms, with no new paint job or alternate modes — or even changes to the root mode! — was a baffling one. Humans reproduced internally, growing parts of another of their kind inside a female's belly with no outside aid or control. It happened almost at random, yet evolution and circumstance had produced a veritable swarm of living beings that now dominated the world. The few newborn infants the Autobots had been introduced to had their undivided attention, internal communication a confused storm of commentary and speculation on how something on the microscopic, cellular level had multiplied in a kind of organized cancerous growth inside a female, been pushed _out_ like a parasite being rejected by the host, and then would continue to grow to an adult size. They could never grow larger than their adult size; conversely, they could never become smaller without permanent damage and psychological trauma.

The Decepticons as a whole were thoroughly unnerved by the little creatures. Cybertronians as a race had no average size or standardized form, color, or shape. They took on outside shape as camouflage and adapted at the program level to new cultures and planets. The idea that an entire race of organic creatures incapable of quick physical adaptation as their environment changed wasn't new, but Cybertron had never encountered a race like humanity. The Decepticons had seen entire species die when something environmental or even cultural changed. They'd actually conquered whole planets simply by landing and assuming control; there were a thousand species out there mentally unable to adapt to outside changes.

So they'd come out into the open on Earth and…nothing. Fear, terror, and rage. Yes, that was to be expected, and it was probably the last expectation the Decepticons had come true when it came to humans. Instead of the impressive explosion (or implosion) as humankind detonated, the Decepticons got front row seats to an entire race doing what even Cybertronians struggled with: mental adaptation to change. Dominating, even thriving in new situations. _Predicting_ the next shift, and _preparing_ for anything that might happen.

A hefty chunk of Cybertron's population had died in denial of inevitable war, unable to wrap their minds around the concept of a planetary rift that set everything on its head. Dumb, bland incomprehension had greeted Megatron's arrival in half the citystates. That bizarrely passive acceptance of death instead of fighting for life had done more than anything to convince Megatron's troops of the righteousness of the Decepticon cause. Megatron had hated that inability to transform to the point that he'd encouraged strife in the ranks to weed it out. Infighting was mandatory. Decepticons had earned their reputation of unpredictable politics, quicksilver personalities, rapidfire technology development, and even emotional instability. Acceptance, weird as it sounded, was a point of intense pride among the Decepticons. Come ye weird and wonderful and terrible, and the Decepticon ranks would _deal with it._(1)

So to encounter a tiny, fleshling race physically unable to transform but almost outpacing Cybertronians mentally had shaken the Decepticons. Xenophobia wasn't really an ingrained trait of Cybertronians. However, the unspoken assumption of racial superiority had been pretty prevalent on Cybertron. Many of the Decepticons still asserted it, but their protestations of _'mere fleshlings'_ and so on ran head-on into humankind's accomplishments every day.

This was a race with an average lifespan of 75 years, and that was if the little organic was fortunate enough to be in a rich country. Yet they regularly upset the Decepticons by the sheer amount of progress they made in those brief lives. Swindle's six-hour stint in the hands of the mysterious Sector Seven had resulted in four countries gaining technology capable of incapacitating experienced Decepticon warriors. _Six hours!_ Bonecrusher had immediately dragged the shaken Combaticon off by one wheel for analysis and debriefing, and it had still taken the Constructicons two days to come up with reliable countermeasures to the new human devices.

Those Autobots who studied humanity's reaction to Cybertronians were a bit frightened. The Decepticons just sort of watched humans busily get on with their lives — _Yes, yes, conquerors from the stars, uh-huh, yeah, we can work around that. Decepticon attack? Work resumes after the rubble clears, folks _- in rapt interest.

Spike and Sparkplug Witwicky had marveled at their ability to stay alive despite repeated Decepticon attacks. Carly often remarked on how lucky she was, looking back at all the times she'd been kidnapped. And while they were a skilled and tremendously lucky little band of humans, they weren't _that_ good. Raoul had almost gotten there while he'd been good-naturedly fending off the curious Autobots who'd weaseled around Tracks' less-than-good-natured interference to poke and prod and investigate this new human(2). He'd said, "How is that I can't get away from you guys, but I got away from the Decepti-creeps? What, were they just not tryin'?"

There had been an awkward moment of shuffling feet and clearing air intakes. Half the Autobots were trying not to think about what he'd almost said. The other half didn't want to tell someone who was only tentatively an ally that he was right. It might lead to an awkward conversation about his future in relation to the Autobots, and Tracks was glaring in a way that said he'd take the first Autobot who opened his big fat mouth out back for a beat-down. Rauol could still have cut and run at that time, which happened more often than not. Being an Autobot ally exposed humans to more danger than most were comfortable walking into. Decepticons knew how to use hostages, and the more emotional attachments the Autobots had to a human, the more valuable a hostage he or she was. Tracks had painted a great big target on Raoul by teaming up with the man.

Yet, oddly, Rauol survived. Just as Spike, Sparkplug, Carly, and nearly every human actually involved in the Decepticons' plots did. In fact, for warriors bent on taking over a planet, they sure seemed reluctant to commit random genocide. Casualties of war, bystanders killed during battle, of course, but wholesale slaughter?

Chip Chase was the only one of their human allies who actually got it. "They're not really trying to kill us, are they," he said to Wheeljack one day while they'd been working in the Autobot's lab. "I've thought about it, and there have been at least eight times when Decepticons could have leveled entire cities before the Autobots interfered. One or two human hostages escaping I can understand, because we're small and, er, squirmy. But from what you've told me about Decepticon tactics on other worlds, statistics should have caught up to us by now."

Wheeljack paused, hands delicately balancing a component and headfins flashing a bit worriedly. He looked down at the handicapped human who regularly out-thought some of the Autobots' (and Decepticons') most brilliant minds. This, the genius mind even the Decepticons reluctantly admired. The mind that belonged to a human trapped in a heavily-damaged body that had to be transported via a primitive wheeled chair. Ratchet could have fixed Chip in a week if he had a Cybertronian body, but instead the medic could only scan the crippled man again and again in helpless frustration. Wheeljack and Perceptor liked Chip Chase; Ratchet and Hoist avoided him like a plague of cosmic rust, unable to face their own inability to offer aid.

"No, Chip. They're not trying to kill you," he said slowly, as if he had to weigh each word before he said it. "I know it doesn't…seem like it, but I think the Decepticons rather like humankind. They'll kill you if you get in the way or if your usefulness is over, but for the most part, they'd just as soon humankind lived as a Decepticon conquest." Even if most of the Decepticons didn't believe humans to be as worthy of consideration as Thundercracker was rumored to believe, they _did_ think humans deserved sentient status. Octane had gone so far as to disappear in the Middle East, cozying up so closely to the natives that Mirage had lost track of the tanker. His disappearance rang alarm bells in the _Ark_, because when Octane went to ground, he made friends and business partners that would work for the Decepticons through him. Swindle's dealings didn't matter, because Swindle would sell a gun to a rock if it had credit. Octane, on the other hand, would screw the humans over without a thought but wouldn't have bothered making alliances unless general Decepticon attitude toward the humans was positive. Since Special Operations hadn't turned up the opportunistic tanker's location despite pouring themselves into the search, the disturbing reality was that at least some of the humans shared that positive attitude right back at the Decepticons.

The thought of humans fighting the Autobots alongside the Decepticons was disquieting — and a real danger.

"The majority of them think organic creatures are disgusting," Wheeljack said to Chip while he thought of all these troubling facts, "and I can't say that life expectancy would be high for any humans under Decepticon control." He looked down at the brilliant human in his wheelchair, an unassuming package for one of the most potentially dangerous enemies the Autobots could face on Earth, and shrugged somewhat weakly. Honesty was an Autobot trait the Decepticons didn't share, and also a curse. "But I've never seen Megatron approach any race as he has humankind."

To which Chip only nodded thoughtfully and continued working. Wheeljack had to wonder if the human had any idea how that set him apart from the rest of the universe.

The Decepticons were unnerved by humans, but how hard was it to destroy a race that didn't give up when faced with death? Or taxes, a universe-wide government practice that humans had honed to a cruel art. Humankind had an unfathomable charm to it. Somehow, the Decepticons had discovered the one ugly little alien race in this galaxy that produced entertainingly stupid television programs and decent music, and could have a fairly involved conversation with a war machine that had lived longer than their race had been around. It defied explanation.

Chip had weighed the odds on his own continued survival and come to the conclusion that the Decepticons wanted to hate humans. They wanted to destroy Earth. Something was stopping Megatron, however, and it wasn't just the Autobots. It had to be humankind itself. That led naturally to observing Decepticon interaction with humankind, and the results were strange. Unpredictable at first glance, and surprising at second. He studied his results and took the next step with them.

Cybertronians in general shared a blindspot for low-tech solutions. Chip Chase approached the American government with his results, and when paper flyers began appearing in post offices and public libraries, and printed on milk cartons across the nation, neither Autobots nor Decepticons noticed for years. If it wasn't distributed by computer systems, it tended to be — not ignored, but overlooked. Even long after the humans turned the flyers and milk cartons into collector's items, reprinting and distributing them around the world, the Cybertronians just didn't see them.

The flyers were simple and, as it turned out, more useful than the Autobots' propaganda had ever been. The title read _In Case of Decepticon Capture_, and each flyer featured a short character summary of a specific Decepticon, along with a few brief instructions for what to do or avoid doing if captured by that Decepticon. Starscream's flyer, for example, detailed a few ways to flatter him. Megatron's flyer said to shut up or, if spoken to, not argue with anything said. Ravage's flyer urgently warned against attempting escape since the technimal dearly loved to chase small, fleeing critters. Rumble and Frenzy's conjoined flyer suggested talking about professional wrestling.

Skywarp's flyer just said to talk. About anything. Thundercracker tended to get defensive if captives tried to speak with him, as if he had to overcompensate for a reputation of maybe, possibly, perhaps respecting humans. Skywarp, however, was openly fascinated by Earth. Moreover, he just plain liked to talk, even if the person he talked with was a human. Chip had written Skywarp's flyer himself, and he followed his own advice to the letter any time he encountered the black-and-purple Seeker. Owing to the fact that he was a high-value hostage, that happened entirely too often. The Decepticons all knew about Chip Chase(4), and being that he was confined to a wheelchair, he was actually one of the less-wriggly captives they could get their hands on.

Which was how Chip ended up on Cybertron, talking to Skywarp yet again. It really wasn't even all that surprising anymore, once he got over the first shock of large robots breaking down various walls in order to kidnap him. For the most part, it wasn't even terribly frightening. Oh, sure, his heart still tried to leap up his throat and strangle him, but there was a vast difference between dodging laserbeams during a pitched Autobot-Decepticon battle and, say for instance, Skywarp casually opening up the side of his house and asking, "Do you want to sit on that porcelain chair before we leave?"

The likelihood of death was much higher in the first incident. Also, using the toilet before being used as a hostage kind of lowered the adrenaline levels. Chip would have been offended by another man blatantly watching him go to the bathroom, but Skywarp's frankly curious gaze was actually less offensive than Perceptor's. Perceptor, Chip had to work with. Being analyzed like a specimen by a coworker tended to be awkward. Skywarp just didn't have the first clue what was going on, and he apparently had no shame in asking the questions half his faction wanted to ask about human handicaps and bodily functions. It was embarrassing but amusing at the same time. Thus, Chip found himself holding a Q&A session for a Decepticon war machine while he went through the routine required for a crippled man to sit on the john. It was, although he'd never admit it, one of the funnier things he'd ever done.

"Thanks," Chip said as he levered himself back into his wheelchair and Skywarp lifted him with a delicacy most of the Autobots never credited the Seeker with. "I didn't want a repeat of last time."

"Don't thank me," Skywarp scoffed as he transformed in a complicated half-twist that most of the Earth-bound Cybertronians with vehicle-mode had figured out. The move deposited the wheelchair squarely in the jet's cockpit, armor-grade glass closing securely against any token escape attempt. Chip's intelligence made him a good hostage there, too; except for the few times he'd managed to rewire something vital, the man knew enough not to try anything stupid while in Decepticon hands. Chip jolted forward before the jet leveled out, but Skywarp's pilot seat had been stripped out, leaving an empty space just large enough for the wheelchair. Chip sat back, then sniffed the air. For some reason, the jet absolutely reeked of coffee. That, more than anything else, took Chip by surprise. "Shockwave ordered me to insure you don't expel waste in his tower. He doesn't like organics or their byproducts, y'know?"

"I see. We're going to Cybertron this time, huh? I'm going to need a passport for interplanetary travel, at this rate." Chip braced himself. The Decepticons on Earth knew human tolerances for G-forces, but that didn't necessarily mean they cared to lower their acceleration into a comfortable zone. "Human, ah, 'byproducts' don't bother you?"

Skywarp lit his thrusters and shot into the sky like a bullet from a gun, and the human in his cockpit made a strange wheezing noise. "Humans are surrounded by weird smells, wastes or not. Your skin alone leaves enough oily residue on me to be annoying. Your waste fluids aren't any more bothersome, although last time you got unpleasantly sloshy."

"Yes, vomit is like that."

"Why didn't you vomit into your porcelain seat?" Skywarp's warp drive spun up as soon as he reached optimal speed, and Chip's stomach made an uneasy _urrrrrgle_ sound as they teleported. A combination of anticipating it and the anti-nausea medication he'd popped while in the bathroom kept Chip from upchucking this time, but it still felt like the bottom of his stomach had been left behind in Portland. Oddly, the strong coffee aroma helped suppress the queasiness. "I was expecting you to."

"That's not a normal way for humans to expel waste," Chip said, fighting back the urge to heave by drawing in large gulps of coffee-scented air. He squinted his eyes against the light blazing through the canopy; the space bridge seemed to be in a desert somewhere this month. "The mouth is usually how we take in fluids and solids, not expel them."

"No, that's not right. I've seen humans expel a lot of things from their mouths." The jet transformed, another complicated maneuver that involved ejected the wheelchair out to freefall for a few seconds before large metal hands emerged to catch him in their grip.

Chip hardly even blinked. "I said 'usually.' I doubt you see many humans under normal circumstances." He gave Thundercracker a reserved nod, which the blue Seeker returned with a bare dip of his chin before turning to access the space bridge controls. Chip squashed a comment about power conservation in the activation sequence. He wasn't here to help the Decepticons, after all.

"You're late," Thundercracker said to his wingmate as he stepped around to join Skywarp inside the space bridge.

"I had to stop at Starbucks on the way to Portland."

"Oh, _Primus,_ don't tell me you — "

"Sixty-four pounds of dark roast, special-order. I thought the workers were going to have coronary pump failures when I taxied in to loading dock." There was more than a bit of evil snicker in Skywarp's voice as he said that, Thundercracker's annoyed groan notwithstanding. The space bridge spooled up and flung them in a whirling ride between worlds, something all three of them ignored with aplomb. Chip was too busy staring in disbelief to give in to nausea this time; it explained Skywarp's strange choice in perfume, at least! "Mixmaster's going to make a gasoline latte if it kills us all," Skywarp said cheerfully, not the least bit upset at the Decepticon chemist's latest mad concoction. Thundercracker, on the other hand, stomped out of the space bridge like a disgruntled stormfront the moment the door slid open. "Just don't get stuck in the repairbay anytime soon," Skywarp called after him. "You'll be fine!"

The black-and-purple Seeker jogged half-heartedly after his wingmate, trotting out a series of reassurances that didn't sound very reassuring even to Chip's ears. Thundercracker seemed to be trying to find something to hide behind, possibly from reality in general. Captor and captive trailed in the blue jet's wake until they ended up in the main control room, where Thundercracker did a good impression of being absorbed in looking over two of the Reflector components' shoulders at a console. The third component didn't seem troubled at being abruptly displaced by the Seeker and simply stepped back to give him room. Skywarp sniggered again and leaned against the side of the console, just out of sight of the screen. Distracted and amused Skywarp might be, but no Decepticon was stupid enough to show Chip Chase what the current plan was, no matter how failsafe anyone said it was.

The human looked up at his captor and shook his head in resigned amusement. It appeared that Skywarp was busy pestering Thundercracker via internal communication, if the fleeting expressions on the jets' faces were anything to go by. The Reflector components were listening in, as they were passing around a gaze that practically dripped exasperation while they worked. Chip turned his eyes to the rest of the control room for lack of anything better to do.

Shockwave's tower looked the way it always did to Chip: badly lit and decorated by an acolyte of the minimalist school with an addiction to purple. That impression was a false one. He'd once mentioned the Decepticon bases' lack of lighting to Perceptor, who'd helpfully informed him that Cybertronian optics just had better perception of the electromagnetic spectrum(5). Teletraan One had actually increased the _Ark_'s normal lighting to compensate for humanity's poor vision. However, nobody had been able to adequately explain the Decepticons' faction-wide love of purple, nor the Autobots' obsession with orange.

Shockwave himself was a purple shape on the monotonously purple tower's command deck. The head of the Cybertron Guard turned his sole optic toward the human hostage for only a moment before returning to work. Soundwave never even looked at the jets and their captive, busy as he was extruding cube frames. That, at least, didn't get on Chip's nerves. Soundwave focused on his tasks, especially ones that dealt with massive amounts of raw energon. There was no sign of the energon itself yet, but Soundwave was amassing a huge stack of the cubes themselves up on the deck.

Shockwave irritated Chip. The purple Guardian of Cybertron was notoriously disdainful of anything from Earth, starting with the humans. Chip's theory was that he was afraid Megatron might become attached to the planet and delay returning to Cybertron. Chip almost made a rude gesture at the cyclopean Decepticon's back when he abruptly left the control room, but there was no reason to provoke an already dangerous mech while in his grasp. Technically, since he was the highest-ranking officer around, although Chip was really in _Skywarp's_ grasp.

Speaking of whom, Skywarp was pulling a face at Shockwave's back himself. Chip grinned. "I could throw up on him if you want," he offered jokingly, and the jet smirked down at him.

"I thought that wasn't normal for humans."

"Well, okay, I could spit on him." A blank look of confusion crossed Skywarp's face, and Chip tilted his head inquiringly. "Spit. It's a contemptuous gesture where humans eject saliva from our mouths." Thundercracker was obviously trying his very best to not acknowledge this fact in any way, shape, or form. One of the Reflector components was watching the blue jet as if he'd combust any minute. That was inappropriately funny to Chip. "Do you know what saliva is?"

"Oral fluid?" Skywarp asked uncertainly. When Chip nodded, the confused look seemed to deepen. "I don't get it. Why would humans voluntarily expel oral fluid?"

"I told you: it's a gesture of contempt."

"But…" The jet's optics dimmed and brightened as he tried to process that. "That doesn't make sense. Why would that show contempt?"

Explaining human customs to alien robots; days like this, Chip felt like he should come with a user's manual. Especially since one of the Reflector components had now turned to listen as well, and a flash of a visor from up on the command deck indicated that Soundwave had heard. "Ah…alright, in the first place, North American humans have a near-phobia in relation to our bodily fluids. We see contact with other people's — or even our own — fluids to lead to a potential spread of filth or disease. I realize Cybertronians don't have the same fear of exchanging fluids with each other, but think about it as contaminating joint lubricant with raw oil. It's not something we do." He shrugged. "And, when it comes down to it, spitting is just messy."

Thundercracker's optics were trained firmly on the ceiling by now. Perhaps the blue Seeker was hoping a hole would open that he could fly through to escape. Skywarp and the listening Reflector component shared a slightly baffled look. "How would you become contaminated? The only orifice that would intake sufficient amounts of fluid would be your mouth, and there would be no cross-contamination. Sharing oral fluid via direct transmission seems common enough on television, anyway."

"Biological warfare?" the Reflector component asked.

"Germs don't need a large amount of fluid to spread." Chip nodded. "A fine mist or spray would be enough to infect a human. That's how the common cold spreads among — wait." He frowned, mind suddenly rewinding to what they _hadn't_ needed explained. "Direct transmission. Do you mean kissing?"

"Yeah."

"You don't find kissing strange?" Some of the Autobots had originally been repulsed by it, although they'd been polite enough to not mention their feelings in those terms. From what the Autobots' group of humans had pieced together over the years, it had been an unusual kink on Cybertron. Ratchet had deemed it _'oral fixation'_ and refused to answer direct questions on the subject. Indirect questioning had gradually outlined things for Chip, who was quite skilled at putting together random comments and mumbled asides on topics the Autobots didn't really want to talk about. So for three — five if one counted all three Reflector components — to casually skip over kissing without even a derisive comment was a bit mindboggling for Chip. In fact, they were all now staring at him as if they found his question to be the strange thing. "Nevermind," he waved a hand in dismissal. The Decepticons must just be a kinky bunch.

Thundercracker seemed happy enough to drop the subject, but Skywarp immediately jumped to another thought. "Show me!"

Chip nearly went over backward in his wheelchair, his mind still stuck on the kissing issue. "What?"

"Spitting!" The black-and-purple Seeker grinned, all shifting armor and mischief as he pulled the human closer to study. He mistook Chip's flustered look for reluctance and changed to a cajoling tone. "Come on, you don't like us. We're the eeeeevil Decepticons. We kidnapped you! Show a little contempt, fleshbag!"

"Didn't those insults get old about three years back?" the observing Reflector component asked dryly. The other two components had returned to working while Thundercracker tried very hard to pay attention to what they were doing. Soundwave hadn't paused in his work at all.

Chip recovered enough to laugh. "Decepti-creep!" he offered like a challenge.

"Auto-scum!"

"Flyboy!"

"Ground crawler!"

"Tin can!"

"Pathetic worm!" Skywarp's best Starscream voice made even Thundercracker's lips twitch. The Reflector components were watching hostage and hostage holder bicker with mild expressions of boredom painted on their faces. Skywarp intentionally puffed himself up in an overblown impression of the Decepticon Air Commander. "You'll never escape!"

"Oh yeah? Until when?"

"15 more minutes until completion," one of the Reflectors said. Chip nodded thanks for the update to him. The Decepticons were fairly reliable in hostage situations so long as they didn't demand too much from the Autobots. If Chip had to guess, he'd say Megatron was bargaining for uninterrupted time for energon transportation through the space bridge. It happened with depressing regularity, and that would explain Soundwave's cube-making.

Skywarp deflated. "Aww, you're not supposed to **tell** him!"

"It's okay," Chip said, because it was rarely a bad idea to humor Skywarp's harmless flights of fancy. It kept the jet's multi-faceted mind occupied, a task that seemed to fall to Thundercracker most days. Chip almost felt sorry for the poor mech, but, well, he didn't. "If a human male really wants to show how much he dislikes someone, he'll do this." Bracing himself, Chip snorted up through his nose _snrrrrk_, cleared his throat _khcrrrhhit_, pushed the bubbled mass of phlegm forward with his tongue _HORK_, and spat over the side of Skywarp's hand _pwt!_

There was a full minute of utter, complete, appalled silence.

Up on the command deck, Soundwave had frozen with a cube half-extruded. His head slowly turned to face the human as if in disbelief for what had just happened. Two Reflector components had stopped mid-typing; after a moment, the console began to beep in protest to whatever keys were being held down. The third component was staring in horror at the tiny splat of fluid oozing over the floor. Thundercracker's left optic was ticking. Skywarp's whole upper torso had jerked back with the first horrific sound the human made, and now he seemed afraid to straighten up.

Chip looked up them all with wide-eyed innocence. "What, you don't do that?"

"…no," Thundercrack said flatly. "Never."

"That was — " Even Skywarp hesitated. " — different. Can all humans do that?"

The human shrugged, enjoyed the unconsciously respectful aura the Decepticons were emitting. Spitting as a weapon of disgust; apparently, some things were universally gross. "We can, but young males are the ones who make such a show of it. It's almost competitive."

"Uh-huh." Not really listening, Skywarp leaned forward warily. From the way he — and the watching Decepticons, because Soundwave was still staring from the command deck — were acting, Chip rather thought they were prepared for the spit to leap up from the floor and try to attack them. "Water-based oral fluid is, er, what's the word you used? Messy. Um. I can see why you worry about contamination from it." The Reflectors finally took their hands off the console, cutting off the error bleep as they turned to regard the floor with similar interest. Even Thundercracker angled a bit to the side to get a better view.

Water-based oral fluids? "Do you have oral fluids?" Chip asked before he could stop himself.

Skywarp took his optics off the spit for a split second to blink at the human. "Sure."

That was new. Why had Chip never asked the Autobots about — oh, yeah, the _'oral fixation'_ blackout from Ratchet. Chip generally tried not to ask his friends uncomfortable questions. Now, enemies were another thing altogether. "What is the base for your oral fluids? Why do you need fluids…oh, I know. Energon." The Decepticons were scanning the spot of rapidly-drying saliva, sparing little attention for the human scientist's musing. "Even processed energon is corrosive enough to be dangerous to humans. Repeated exposure to liquid energy would scour intake surfaces down like sandpaper on plywood. Self-repair nannites would be constantly working just to patch intake systems, not to mention the tank gaskets and aperture valves. Holy cow, Ratchet would blow a fuse if he had to replace those in everyone every few months!" Chip shook his head, eyes flicking back and forth behind his glasses as an unknown mystery up and solved itself in a matter of seconds. "Your oral fluids are a coating, aren't they? I always wondered why robots had to swallow, but it never occurred to me that it was an encapsulating process! Amazing. That's just amazing!" He leant to the side and slapped at Skywarp's thumb. "Hey, you!"

The Seeker redirected his attention to the babbling human in his hand. "What?"

"I need a sample of your oral fluid," Chip ordered.

Skywarp opened his mouth, then closed it. "…huh?" He didn't seem to know what to say to that. Thundercracker and Reflector were even more speechless. The Decepticons just weren't used to pushy little humans with their rapid jumps in thought that worked at right angles to Cybertronian minds. "O…kay?" the Seeker agreed uncertainly. He glanced about as if a sample straw would appear out of nowhere. The Reflector components actually patted down their hip armor as if searching for some, and Thundercracker looked over both wings before catching himself. Up on the command deck, Soundwave looked down at the cube framework in his hands, wrenched himself away from offering it, and visibly redirected himself back to work.

Chip just rolled his eyes. "Use your finger, Skywarp." He didn't need much. A small sample would be enough to get an idea of the chemical base for the fluid.

A helpless smile plastered itself over Skywarp's face. The absurd things humans wanted never ceased to entertain him. Still smiling, he stuck a finger in his mouth and brought it out and down to the human's level. Thundercracker smacked a hand over his own face, embarrassed for no good reason by his wingmate's actions.

The fluid gleamed slickly for a few seconds, but even as Chip reached out to touch it, it began to dry. "That's just amazing," he repeated, absolutely thrilled as the liquid dried and peeled up, sticking in an oddly familiar way to his hand. It came off Skywarp's finger in a clear, thin sheet that crinkled and stuck to itself as soon as it left metal. The sense that the substance was very familiar pestered Chip until it finally hit him what it reminded him of. "Cling film!" Excited, he tried to tear the clear sheet, first with his fingers and, when that failed, by attempting to saw it over the handbrake handle on his wheelchair. It was tougher than its thin feeling suggested and resisted his efforts. "It's not plastic wrap, but by God, it's something similar! This is amazing!"

The three — or five, with all three Reflector components — Decepticons watched the human play with Skywarp's oral fluid, totally floored by his delight. "I don't get it," Skywarp muttered at last. "Why are you so excited? It's nothing new."

Chip beamed up at him, overflowing with goodwill toward his inadvertent partner. "It's new to me! I've never seen this before!"

"Yes, you have," Thundercracker disagreed slowly. He pointed up at the command deck where Soundwave was determinedly ignoring them all. "Half the Decepticons don't have mouths, but direct tank connections are too vulnerable in battle. All of us have intakes of one form or another, and protective fluids. Soundwave's are just dense enough for structural formatting."

The human looked at the stacks of empty cubes as if he'd seen the pure light of science appear before him. He'd never gotten a proper look at an empty cube before. There were more important things in the war to concentrate on, and empty cubes were hard to come by. Most cubes dispersed, dissolved into the last of the energon inside as they emptied. "The energon cubes are oral fluids?"

"More like oral fluids are diluted intake fluids, but yeah." Skywarp looked between happy hostage and Decepticon Communication Officer, and that devilish curiosity lit up his optics. "So if oral fluid is…plastic wrap, what's a cube?" Soundwave's work hitched, something that wouldn't have been noticeable if the three — five? — Decepticons hadn't been looking for it. A faintly worried expression crossed Thundercracker's face, as if the blue Seeker were thinking of consequences.

Chip thought about it for a moment, remembering the few times he'd touched the outside of an energon cube. Energon in the _Ark_ was rationed out via the dispensers, but he'd been around cubes. They felt heavier than the tough film in his hands, and he smiled as it dawned on him what the cubes now reminded him off. He made sure to turn that smile on Soundwave, and the tapedeck half-turned toward him in response. "It's Tupperware. Soundwave is a glorified Tupperware maid."

There was a single, perfect moment of stillness as that sank into their minds. Chip hoped that the image of a 50's housewife bent over a checkered tablecloth covered in plastic Tupperware had been burnt permanently into their minds, because he personally relished the thought of Soundwave in an apron. Dignity was a lost cause for the mech forevermore, and the Autobots were going to laugh themselves _sick_ when Chip passed this tidbit of information along. And they all knew it, too. Chip idly made a mental note to update the warning flyers for taboo topics when he got home; there were now a few words banned from Soundwave's presence on pain of instant termination.

Into that moment of revelation walked Shockwave. He re-entered the command center and approached the group clustered around Reflector's console, and he had no idea, absolutely no idea, what he'd just walked into the middle of. "Lord Megatron commands the — "

No one had been looking, but Skywarp's mouth worked for a second. There was a sharp retort like a wet plastic bag striking a frying pan, and Shockwave stopped mid-stride. Thundercracker's optics did their level best to bulge, which was physically impossible yet seemed about to happen any second. Reflector recoiled in three different directions, and Soundwave made a sound. Chip didn't know how else to describe the noise. It was kind of a _fizzle_, but far more dismayed. A rapidly-solidifying clear substance dripped excruciatingly slowly from Shockwave's optic. The sound of thoughts failing to connect in the purple Decepticon's head was almost audible.

Skywarp looked down at the human in his hand. "Did I do it right?"

Chip lifted one hand and wavered it indecisively in the air. "You didn't add the sound effects."

"Oh, right."

Thundercracker went from stunned to action in the fraction of a second before Skywarp tried his experiment again, because the blue Seeker had far more experience than he wanted in crazy-wingmate damage control(6). With one hand, he snatched the wheelchair neatly off Skywarp's outstretched hand. With the other, he grabbed two components of Reflector and shoved them at their third. The human, shaken but not in the slightest alarmed, found himself in the center component's arms.

"Lord Megatron commands the hostage be returned immediately to Earth," Thundercracker, well, _thundered._ A discerning person might be inclined to think Thundercracker was trying to drown out anything Shockwave might recover enough to interject. "Reflector - **go.**"

As much as Reflector loved to observe, this was one confrontation he definitely didn't want to be in the middle of. "Yes sir!" the components said in unison, and they were out the nearest door at a march only a hint away from a flat-out run. The human in their arms started making a weird _hurr hurrrrr_ chuff as soon as the doors closed, and the components on either side closed in to study him. For some reason, Chip Chase's face had flushed beet red. He seemed be getting enough oxygen — the component holding him loosened his grip just in case — but he wasn't breathing regularly.

"Do you require medical assistance?" one of the components asked. "Have you sustained damage?"

"N-no. I'm — I'm-a-okay-thankyou," the human rattled out in a funny, high-pitched voice. "Better-hurry-guys. Your-don't-wanna-miss-the-Tupperware-party." Chip desperately sucked in a deep breath, held it as long as he could, and burst out laughing despite himself.

Reflector relaxed. The human was fine.

But wasn't that always true? Bend them, break them, torture, kill, kidnap, and even inflict bad homemade postcards on them, and the humans would be fine. Change a color here or there, and they might fuss a bit, but it seemed that even time would clear that strange bit of human thought away. It was quickly becoming a fact of Decepticon life that the humans weren't going anywhere, and neither race was entirely sure what to make of that.

Honestly, Reflector wasn't too worried about it. Humans and Decepticons adapted. It's what they did best, even when they were adapting to Tupperware parties and spittakes.

The space bridge powered up, energy whirling, and under the cover of Chip Chase's hysterical laughter, a soft, triple-voice giggle went all the way to Earth.

They were going to be just fine.

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

**Footnotes**

**[* * * * *]**

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><p>(1)<em>Bring It On!<em> was the Decepticon attitude toward change. The Autobots, although they waffled over admitting it, actually came in lower on the acceptance scale. Just ask Sunstreaker or the Aerialbots. Or the Dinobots, if a particularly graphic demonstration of the Autobots' inability to adopt differences into the ranks was needed. The Decepticons had been collectively baffled by the Autobots socially isolating what they saw as the best fighters in the _Ark_. The closest the Decepticons ever came to that attitude was toward the Insecticons, and that was mostly because the Insecticons would eat anything not nailed down if they were allowed into the _Victory_ without someone watching them every second. They still sent the bugs regular postcards in Bali, and it was only partly because post offices in three countries had sixteen different kinds of fits over delivering postcards with "Wish you were here!" overlaid on pictures of Decepticons doing normal stuff, i.e. Astrotrain tethered to a satellite, fast asleep, or the Coneheads playing Freefall Twister.

(2)The Autobots had never truly interacted with a mixed-race person before. Most of that was due to politics, which they'd only become aware of when Sparkplug refused to work with the other man, and his son had to explain to them the political and cultural landmine that was African American and Caucasian American in the mid-80's USA. Not only did the concept knock Perceptor on his aft ("Your genetic structure differs only fractionally from our government liaison's. Does skin coloration truly change your status from socially acceptable to pariah?" "Say _what_, man?"), but it opened Optimus Prime's optics to reasons behind the USA's subtle disapproval of Autobot actions in the certain parts of the world. To a race that often changed their bodies, judging another by color seemed…absurd. After segregation, legal or otherwise, was explained, it was no wonder to any of the Autobots why Tracks got along so well with Raoul. Tracks had been more offended by Sparkplug's racism than he ever let on, and looks became quite important to some of the Autobots, too. Exaggerated vanity became a passive form of social commentary.

The Autobots were offended by racism. The Decepticons, once they understood it(3), took advantage of it. Most of their human allies had darker skin colors, and it wasn't because darker meant evil. It was because the Autobots had allied with the United States of America, which had most of the whiter countries in its corner and wasn't so quick to leap to the defense of countries populated by darker-skinned humans.

(3)_That_ had been an interesting briefing, as it had almost led to Megatron painting himself black to fit in with the USA's concept of black and white/evil and good. He'd eventually decided it was the Autobots' problem to make their color-judgment crazy human allies understand that silver = bad guy. Starscream had nearly laughed himself off a chair when the Air Commander finally understood why the humans kept running toward him and away from Skywarp; "They think **I'm** the nice one?"

(4)A heavy hint of the Decepticons' actual feelings toward humanity had come from Scavenger, of all mechs. While the Constructicon wasn't exactly known for his self-confidence outside of battle, Chip had initially been puzzled as to why there was a very large construction vehicle lurking almost shyly around his neighborhood. Excavators didn't do lurking — or shy, for that matter — very well. Only after Bumblebee and Ironhide arrived to chase him off did Chip find out that Scavenger had been hoping to 'scavenge' Chip himself for the other Constructicons. As Ironhide explained it, Chip had to move house to a more secure location after that because he had a _"deranged fanmech for a stalker."_

(5)"Do all of your optics see more of the spectrum?"

"Oh, no, that would be far too universal. We try to match model function to specialized function."

"I understand narrowing focus for, say, a frontliner, but what about your optics?"

"My optics do indeed capture the electromagnetic spectrum in its entirety. For example, did you know that your friend Carly's body registers higher on the infrared spectrum than your own?"

"…Perceptor, did you just say Carly's hotter than I am?"

"I believe I did. Why?"

"The next time we're in Portland, I need you to look at a few girls with me. Just for comparative purposes."

"Ah? Ah."

"I have a theory."

"I'm sure you do, Mr. Chase."

(6)Skywarp wasn't usually the dangerous one. Some days, Thundercracker half-believed Megatron had promoted Starscream to Air Commander just to keep the mech busy. A Starscream with time on his hands required Skywarp, Thundercracker, four Constructicons, and possibly an assault squadron to contain his latest venture into _"I wonder what would happen if…"_


	8. Carol of the Decepticons

_"Baby Jesus won't make it out alive."_

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><p><strong>Title: <strong>Carol of the Decepticons

**Warning: **Christmas-related silliness, mostly American. Theoretically offensive jokes.

**Rating: **G

**Continuity: **G1 (Footnotes)

**Characters:** Decepticons.

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **Advent Calendar #1: Optical illusion, and various holiday stories/songs listed at end.

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

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><p>It started with a report.<p>

Or rather, it started with an incident that inspired the report that —

- no, wait, it probably started with the Autobots that led to the incident that inspired the report that —

- but it wasn't the Autobots' fault that the holiday season had started really early this year with —

- okay, so, blame Black Friday in the USA. If anyone had been paying attention, they would have noticed that's when twitchy behaviorism became full-fledged paranoia. But no one was, because they had bigger things to worry about. Megatron had traveled to Cybertron to oversee the ongoing attempt to chase down the Autobot guerilla combat units, and Optimus Prime had followed to lend assistance to Ultra Magnus. The Autobots were still being steadily driven off of Cybertron, but they weren't making it easy for Megatron. The Decepticons left on Earth were required to step up their energon-gathering to fuel the war effort, and the Autobots on Earth had been making that task difficult. Optimus Prime was off-planet, but the Dinobots and Aerialbots were turning up at every battle. This was a headache for Soundwave and Starscream, who were actually fairly good at this cooperation thing when they absolutely had to do it(1).

So when the day after Thanksgiving came around, nobody noticed a certain Decepticon beginning to fret. Or, if they had, they had attributed it to driving in retail shopping traffic, because that stuff was slagging scary(2).

Right. The report of the incident caused by the Autobots but really started by Black Friday read as follows:

_Upon encountering the Autobot patrol, passive observation became impossible. Stunticon unit (temporary assignment to Combaticons) was subjected to intense psychological warfare. Stunticon unit's state of mind necessitated engagement. Inherent abilities of Stunticon unit threatened fighting abilities of Combaticons despite favorable odds. When quick engagement resulted in no clear victory, mutual retreat allowed both sides of the encounter to disengage without further damage. However, significant damage to Stunticon unit's mental stability had already been accomplished. Stunticon's engine ability continued to inflict damage on Combaticons, and extreme measures were required in order to penetrate Stunticon unit's force field and cease inter-factional hostility. See list of required repairs for further information._

"Well." Starscream put the report down and regarded Soundwave with a quizzical expression. "While that does absolutely nothing to explain how exactly two Autobot minibots and a human managed to take down a combiner team and adjunct team member, it is the most creative retelling of the facts I've ever read." He shook his head. "I feel like I should be taking notes. Swindle can manage to twist **anything** to sound how he wants it."

"Agreed." Soundwave himself was still watching the human broadcast that had been looping through most of North America for the past twelve hours. He'd read the report the moment it had been filed, but the broadcast told the story better.

It had been playing on the bridge of the Decepticon base almost since the first news story broke about the short-lived fight between the Combaticons and Bumblebee, Cliffjumper, and Spike. While the fight itself hadn't been caught on film, the aftermath had. Swindle and Brawl were twisted in pain on the ground, vulnerable parts vibrated loose by proximity when Breakdown had started doing his level best to shake apart everyone at the seams. Vortex was standing guard, no less pained but carefully looking everywhere but at the messy aftermath of the battle. The aftermath, i.e. _'extreme measures'_ as retold by Swindle, seemed to involve Blast Off and Onslaught taking turns hugging Breakdown, force field and all, with their optics shut off to avoid looking at the paranoid Stunticon.

Starscream's own attention drifted back to the screen. "It did work," he admitted. "Not the same counter-measure I'd have taken, but I hope that somebody's stuck that in his file for possible diffusion methods." The problem with creating mechs with impenetrable force fields was how to take them down when they went around the bend. The Decepticons had started compiling potential methods the moment they realized the problem the Stunticons could become. Not staring at Breakdown was the first on the list; having optics on him set him off in paranoid fits. Hugging him hadn't been included, but Decepticons were big fans of the _Whatever Works_ school of improvision.

"Report: of more concern," Soundwave reminded Starscream. "Psychological warfare apparently effective. Counter-measures must be developed immediately."

"Yessss." The Air Commander frowned, mind picking apart Swindle's smooth-talking report. "I've already grilled Onslaught on what exactly the Autobots were doing when they ran into the, hmm, 'patrol,'" it hadn't really been a patrol, but the Seeker had allowed the Combaticon leader to retain what few scraps of dignity he had left during the interrogation, "and all he'll say is that the Autobots had their radios turned up irritatingly loud. After that, Breakdown — and I quote Brawl — 'just lost it.'"

Audio warfare was Soundwave's realm of specialty, and the communications officer instantly began spinning through all the radio stations in the area of the encounter. Nothing stood out. All the local stations seemed to be playing music based on a seasonal theme, but that wasn't new. The Decepticons had been baffled by Christmas at first, but they'd been on Earth for long enough to mellow their bafflement into tolerance(3). Some of the Decepticons even enjoyed the traditional music from this season now, after having it assault them from all sides year after year. They'd gotten used to it, and then it had gotten to them.

No. It wasn't new at all. Unless one was a new mech, new to Earth and new to Earth music.

Soundwave's thoughts froze. It couldn't possibly be that simple.

Starscream was watching the broadcast again, but he noticed when Soundwave connected the nearest console to the repairbay. "Find something?"

"Perhaps." He held up a hand, asking for patience. Starscream cocked an optic at him and held his peace for the moment.

Scrapper answered the call, looking cranky. His team had been one of those put under pressure by the increased energon raids. He'd threatened that if the Dinobots destroyed one more Space Bridge, Devastator was going scrap the mission at hand and try to make Grimlock into a wind-up toy instead. "If this is about the Combaticons," he barked at Soundwave, "we already pitched them out on their afts. Go bother Onslaught." Behind him, lying quiet and wide-opticked with rigidly controlled terror, Breakdown was perfectly still under Hook's hands.

Soundwave leaned forward, looking past Scrapper at the Stunticon. "Breakdown."

Hook raised a fist in clear threat: _Move and I'll dismantle you._ The Stunticons had learned to obey the Constructicons the hard way, after the thing with Wildrider and the ankle-chains(4). Breakdown just turned his head.

Soundwave played a very brief music clip: _"Do you see what I see?"_

"AA**AAAAAA**AAAAAAAAAA_**AA**__AAAAAAAAAAAA!_"

Off to the side, Starscream had actually fallen off his chair he was laughing so hard. Scrapper and Hook were howling curses, trying to restrain their patient. Breakdown was a writhing, screaming wildcat of a mech, scrambling to get away, and Soundwave sat back with a sigh of his vents. So. Human holidays. He added that to Vortex's ongoing list of things to adjust the Stunticons to on Earth. He also pinged Motormaster to come rescue his gestaltmate before the Constructicons rebuilt the poor mech into a pictureframe or something.

After a second, he pinged Onslaught and Blast Off, too. They had experience calming Breakdown down, after all.

Starscream's balance hadn't improved by the time Soundwave turned back. He seemed strangely content to lay flat on the floor, one thruster propped on his chair seat and arms spread wide over his wings. The laughter had trailed off into the occasional chortle, but his grin still stretched wide while he gazed up at the ceiling. In fact, he was looking at the ceiling so intently that Soundwave found himself glancing upward just in case there really was something there. There wasn't. Starscream was just thinking. Being undignified and thinking, which did happen at infrequent intervals when the sharp mind behind that spastic walking ego went to work.

It was a little frightening, to be honest, but Soundwave would never admit to the creeping icicle of fear dripping down in his chest.

The door hissed open, and someone walked inside the bridge. Starscream turned his head and let his grin widen when he saw who it was. Thundercracker took one look at his wingmate's evil grin and odd position, and he stopped in his tracks. He very carefully didn't turn his back. He just took slow, steady steps backward, optics locked on the Air Commander. A system-wide warning went out over the Air Elite's closed channel the moment the door closed, and if Soundwave didn't habitually monitor it, he wouldn't have been treated to the ever-funny sound of composed Thundercracker sounding anything but calm:

"_Starscream's plotting something."_

"_So? He's always plotting something."_

"_He's __**grinning**__. He's laying on the floor next to Soundwave, and he's smirking like he just assassinated someone!"_

"_Did you say he's laying on the floor?"_

"_Primus. I'm getting the Pit out of here."_

"_Where could you possibly hide?"_

"_Australia's nice this time of year. Or China. Skywarp, want to go tour the Great Wall?"_

"_What? No. Worst piece of landscaping I ever saw. They never even finished it!"_

"_Let me put it this way: it's China or Starscream's latest spate of brilliance."_

"…_I feel the need to visit somewhere very far away. China it is!"_

"_Too late. Check your duty updates."_

"_Briefing time in twelve. Fraaaaaag."_

Soundwave tried to discretely scoot his chair away, but the blasted thing was attached to the floor. The scuff of his feet made Starscream tilt his helm up to look at him upside-down, however, and there was a peculiar kind of mischief in his optics. His mind remained solidly guarded, blocking Soundwave from his actual thoughts, but there was a definite sense of restrained hilarity radiating from him.

"We have a mission," Starscream reminded him.

"Yes," Soundwave agreed cautiously.

"I've moved the briefing up."

"Change noticed. Reasons?"

"I have them." As if that wasn't frustratingly vague, Starscream stretched like a contented cat on the floor. Just like a cat, he defied physics and somehow took up more space than seemed physically possible. Soundwave had to pull his feet up to avoid a blue hand sweeping across the floor under his chair. The jet gave a thoughtful hum and relaxed again, still looking upside-down at Soundwave. "Breakdown's breakdown has given me an idea, and while it's going to take more effort initially, I think changing the mission profile will ultimately be to our benefit."

And then he explained. It was, predictably enough, utter madness.

Fortunately, Starscream was exceedingly skilled at finding a method in such things. The rest of the Decepticons even agreed: two birds, one stone. Stealing a metric aft-load of energon plus improving Breakdown's mental health, all at the cost of making a mockery of themselves. Which, even the most arrogant of them had to admit, happened on a regular basis on Earth anyway. Doing it intentionally made all the difference to the faction's pride as a whole because at the end of the day, no Autobot was going to mock _this_ stunt.

They didn't, either. Three days after Christmas, Blaster unscrambled the last of the callsigns and code the Decepticons had used. There had been no attempts to hide mission communications. The Decepticons had simply broadcasted across every radio frequency they could reach on the East Coast, and the Americans' outpouring of Christmas cheer had disguised what was actually being said until it was too late. The few blurts of connected exchanges were thought to be bad transmissions, or even a harmless prank by local station DJs to get laughter from listeners. By the time anyone figured out what was going on, actual events were anything but laughable.

To anyone who wasn't a Decepticon, anyway. To the Decepticons, Christmas Eve had been _awesome_.

'Twas the night before Christmas, and the Decepticons attacked.

"_Santa, Santa, have you reached the house-top?"_

"_Negative. Sleigh delayed. Rudolph uncooperative."_

"_Well, the others won't let me join in any Reindeer games!"_

"_Rudolph, is your nose so bright?"_

"_I'm about to go down in history."_

"_Request: ignore other Reindeer. Guide Sleigh tonight."_

The Decepticons skidded in under coastal radar by the tiniest of margins, apparently flying so low and underpowered that they relied on Starscream (mission callsign: Rudolph) to guide them in. He flew point and took out any boats that got in their way. His 'bright nose' haunted many a New England sailor after that night, as his nullrays glowed in menacing streaks through the ocean fog, and all that was left in his wake was the scream of jet engines and wreckage. The six Decepticon jets, Vortex, and Blitzwing (group callsign: Reindeer) rode his tailfins in, and Astrotrain (callsign: Sleigh) followed close behind. Soundwave (callsign: Santa) rode inside him.

"_For the record: you're lively and quick, Rudolph."_

"_Your record needs more glee. Although the shouting was quite impressive."_

"_And your nose is indeed quite shiny. Mamma, do you have your 'kerchief?"_

"_Yup. Pa's got his cap, too. We've hung the stockings by the chimney with care, and nobody's stirring."_

"_Children are nestled in?"_

"_Tucked 'em in myself. We're just waiting for St. Nick. Status?"_

"_We've reached the top of the porch. Dasher's scouting the top of the wall. House-top ETA: 2 minutes."_

"_Mamma?"_

"_We're ready to fly in a flash. What's the delay? I can't see what's the matter."_

"_Visibility issues. Soon resolved."_

The house-top, also known as Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, was taken completely surprise. Brawl (mission callsign: Mamma) and Swindle (callsign: Pa) took a day and a half to sneak the Stunticons (callsign: Children) through Maryland to a parking garage within six miles of the power plant. Swindle hired an unwitting moving company to loan out their largest moving trailers; these 'stockings' were positioned nearby, ready for packing and retrieval by the Stunticons while Brawl and Swindle ran interference with a pair of very overpowered weapons, i.e. their 'cap' and ''kerchief.' The power plant was entirely unprepared when Skywarp (callsign: Dasher) suddenly appeared out of nowhere above it.

Astrotrain, escorted by the other Decepticons, roared out of the fog soon after.

"_There we go. Nice Christmas lights, guys."_

"_I thought the decorations were a bit of an overkill, personally."_

"_What can I say? 'Tis the season for sugar plums and snow. I expect some serious prancing and pawing to go with the clatter, reindeer."_

"_You've never seen us dash like this, Mamma. You just watch and wonder and see what appears."_

The attack began with a rain of flash-bangs and incendiary bombs that took out anything that could fight back. A signal-blurt for help got out, but Soundwave — bizarrely repainted in bright red with white trim, including a pure white face mask - imposed a communication black-out over several square miles of Maryland. Yet he allowed radio signals to continue unimpeded, and, in fact took over the local stations' broadcasts. The stations blared Christmas music obnoxiously; no one who wasn't in sight of the attack even noticed the change. The jets peeled off and began destroying everything even remotely military that caught their optics as Brawl and Swindle plowed a path to the power plant for the Stunticons. Vortex landed and tore an opening into the plant for Soundwave, and then he stood guard outside.

"_Imminent birth!" _

"_Say again, Shepherds?"_

"_The Virgin Mary's gone into premature labor!"_

Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., the distraction and second half of the Decepticons' plan went into motion as Air Force One, a.k.a. 'Virgin Mary,' landed half an hour early due to a scheduling SNAFU. The Autobots could only thank Primus later that the President had arrived before the Constructicons (callsign: Shepherds) could get into place.

"_Good Lord, report!"_

"_Angel Gabriel got a message out before I could snipe him - we've got choirs of angels inbound as we speak."_

"_Wise Men, find Joseph and keep him away from the Virgin. Innkeeper?"_

"_I'll make sure there's no room in the inn."_

"_Baby Jesus in the manger! I repeat, Baby Jesus is in the manger!"_

"_Well, this is turning into an O Holy Night. Wise Men?"_

"_We've lost the star. Where is Baby Jesus?"_

Blast Off attempted to snipe Prowl, a.k.a. Angel Gabriel, from orbit. The Autobot SiC had been on his way out of Washington D.C. after meeting with the Vice-President, but he managed to dodge a fatal shot and crawled under a bypass. From there, he called for Autobot support. The Aerialbots, or 'choirs of angels,' launched. The Insecticons (callsign: Wise Men) immediately moved into the USA capitol in a search for Silverbolt, or 'Joseph,' who had been flying escort for Air Force One. Onslaught (callsign: Innkeeper) opened fire on the White House, reducing it to flaming rubble.

The second the President, codenamed 'Baby Jesus,' left Air Force One, the Decepticons lost him in the screaming crowd of humanity. The Insecticons had tagged one of his Secret Service guards for tracking, but a piece of debris took the man down and away from the President.

"_Hold up. Santa, are you down the chimney?"_

"_He spoke not a word after going straight to work. His bundle of toys is intact. Do we have something to dread?"_

"_Nativity Play began early. Can you spare Blitzen, Rudolph?"_

"_Are you trying to start a War on Christmas? Blitzen can't be in the manger scene!"_

"_We'll take our chances. Baby Jesus is escaping Bethlehem, and the Wise Men need intel."_

"_Blitzen, you're reassigned. Get out under cover of the wreath of smoke and meet up with the Wise Men. Hit Bethlehem hard and fast."_

At this point, Soundwave had begun siphoning energy from the nuclear power plant. The stack of cubes, or 'bundle of toys' was being handed out of the plant by Vortex as Soundwave filled them. The helicopter passed them to the Stunticons, who loaded the trailer-'stockings' and took off as soon as they were packed. They went off in every direction to avoid pursuit, but mostly headed for the Jersey Turnpike, where a previously unnoticed Space Bridge had just activated.

The construction of the Space Bridge had been watched with a healthy dose of apathy and irritation by the human drivers passing by on the Turnpike, but the strategic placement of a few of Swindle's rent-a-cop hirelings carrying a shovel in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other had kept anything like a suspicion from forming. Everyone in on the Turnpike was used to watching road construction not-happen. The light show when the Space Bridge activated had generated a mild amount of interest, but the rent-a-cops hadn't even put their donuts down. At least, not at first. Now, the sight of Shockwave stepping out of Space Bridge had brought traffic to a screeching halt!

…for about two minutes. This was Christmas Eve, after all.

Back at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, Blitzwing (callsign: Blitzen) dumped his cargo of cubes and took off for Washington D.C. to blaze a trail of destruction through the capitol in a search for the President. A fact that the Autobots were only aware of once he left Soundwave's communications black-out.

"_What's my mission callsign reassignment?"_

"_King Herod."_

"_I'm on it. Baby Jesus won't make it out alive."_

"_He'd better not. The Ghost of Christmas Past has already been to see Scrooge."_

"_Time?"_

"_6 minutes until The Ghost of Christmas Present departs."_

"_Ho ho ho, fraggers."_

"_Wrong callsign."_

"_What? Holiday cheer is like a sword, right? No one said that mass execution of innocents couldn't be done merrily."_

Blitzwing encountered the Aerialbots coming into Washington D.C. airspace, and the Constructicons were already tackling the Dinobots while Blast Off sniped from above and Onslaught helped the Insecticons chase important human officials. They were all being wonderful distractions as, back on the Jersey Turnpike, the first of Reflector's components (callsigns: The Ghosts of Christmas) arrived at the Space Bridge to update Shockwave (callsign: Scrooge).

At the power plant, the first of the Autobots in the second squadron was spotted. The Decepticons scrambled to stuff as much energon as they could into Astrotrain, who seemed frankly uncomfortable with how much they were shoveling into him. Witnesses testified that Vortex and Dirge dug their feet in and used their shoulders to push on the stacks of cubes as they tried to pack the volatile pink energon in tight enough to wedge in just a few more cubes.

"_There's the whistle!"_

"_Rudolph, sitrep!"_

"_Stockings are all filled, he's up the chimney, and—oh. The poor Sleigh."_

"_He's covered in soot and ash!"_

"_Appearances: unimportant. Tarnish will wash off."_

"_Whatever. Just update the Ghost and send him off to visit Scrooge. We're driving out. Literally; I can't take off with this many presents loaded."_

Astrotrain gingerly chugged off overland in trainmode, loudly complaining the whole way about explosive cargo and the mess Soundwave was leaving inside him. The Decepticon Third in Command had started a chain reaction in the power plant reactors, forcing the Autobot squadron to stop in order to stabilize the plant, but the original detonation had backfired spectacularly in his face. Witnesses said he emerged from the plant with his new red paint streaked with black char.

"_That's why you have Reindeer, Sleigh. Get out of sight and fly. Nativity Play update?"_

"_We've got a full house; everybody's in the stable. The animals were set loose, and there are choirs of angels singing everywhere. No sign of Baby Jesus, but how would we find him in this mess? They all look the same when they're dead."_

"_Send in the Shepherds and Wise Men to—"_

"_Bah Humbug! It's a Bah Humbug!"_

"_Ghost of Christmas Present, report!"_

"_Scrooge says Bob Cratchit is on the attack!"_

"_Jacob Marley?"_

"_Fighting Tiny Tim! Orders are to abort the gift exchange and do some fancy wrapping instead. We'll have a Secret Santa party later via the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come."_

"_Got it. Get out of there."_

"_Don't have to tell me twice!"_

The _Ark_ had bounced a transmission through the open Space Bridge by then, and the Autobots on Cybertron started a desperate attack. Ultra Magnus, a.k.a. 'Bob Cratchit,' ordered the ambush of several Decepticon outposts, which required Shockwave's quick return to Cybertron in order to coordinate a drone counter-attack. Megatron (callsign: Jacob Marley) had been monitoring the raid from Cybertron, ready to receive the energon shipment from Earth, when Tiny Tim, better known as Optimus Prime, broke into Shockwave's Tower to attack him personally.

Reflector fled back through the Space Bridge to Earth, where the Decepticons were bringing presents down the Jersey Turnpike for the good mechs and femmes of Cybertron. Megatron's orders were relayed, and the Stunticons disappeared back into traffic. Astrotrain trundled into the air with some assistance from his "eight tiny Reindeer," who heckled him all the way, much to the amusement of the human drivers left down below.

"_Nativity Play players, withdraw. Rudolph, what's status on the Menorah?"_

"_Standing by and ready to kindle the lights."_

"_Jacob Marley's converted. Time for Hanukkah."_

And on Cybertron, Sunstorm dropped from orbit like a burning comet of Primus' wrath aimed directly at Optimus Prime's head. Megatron had painstakingly explained the various religions behind the celebration of Christmas on Earth to the crazy Seeker, and then heavily implied that Prime was trying to import those religions to Cybertron. Apparently, this was enough to infuriate a devote follower of Primus. Who knew?

"_Acknowledged. Tell Jacob Marley he has eight minutes before the festival ends."_

"_Right on. Santa, how d'ya feel about coming to town? I've got a Naughty List."_

"_Detour acceptable."_

"_Think we got on the Nice List?"_

"_We'd better have. Reindeer get a free pass, don't they?"_

"_Don't worry, Santa checked the List twice."_

"_Yeah, but we laughed and called Rudolph names."_

"_So? He cried __**and**__ pouted._"

"…_you'd better watch out, Vixen."_

"_Ah-heh. Yessir."_

"_What does the Naughty List get, anyway?"_

"_Coal."_

"_But I like coal."_

"_Not this coal."_

"_Oh." _

"_Coming to town. Defenses: look asleep. Probability is high that they are awake. Town is attempting to disguise being alerted to possible visit. Elves' assistance required."_

"_On our way, boss. North Pole out."_

It took Blaster three days to sort out the Decepticons' mission logs because Soundwave and his festively-repainted Cassetticons (callsign: Elves) landed near the _Ark_ and proceeded to infiltrate, sabotage, and hack whatever could be reached before anyone could chase them away. Teltraan 1 went on the fritz, having been given a payload of a Decepticon communication specialist's worst viruses, a.k.a. 'coal.' After letting themselves be driven away by decidedly Grinch-like Autobots, the jolly bunch of Decepticons caused havoc at nearly thirty McDonald's locations and a K-Mart on their flight to the coast and onward to their base(5).

But they were heard to exclaim, as they retreated out of sight, "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"

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**Footnotes**

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><p>(1)After mistakenly downloading a management tutorial written by a New York City business tycoon, Megatron had begun advocating communication in the workplace. He felt it did the Decepticons good to be informed of exactly what would happen if they failed him. In the spirit of being communicative, he'd given a very nice speech before leaving his treacherous Second in Command and more subtle Third behind on Earth. It had featured stirring usages of motivational phrases that left Starscream petrified with inspiration, standing at attention like a statue long after Megatron left the room. Soundwave had been right there next to the Air Commander, and he'd been shaking hard enough that a fine-tuned ear could have picked up the sound of Ravage's collar-bell jingling from inside his chest. The two Decepticon officers had agreed that 'twas the season for not getting killed - and that they never wanted to endure Megatron's version of motivational speaking again.<p>

(2) Even Blitzwing obeyed the road rules this time of year, and he was a _tank_. Decepticon road rage had nothing on a mother of three trying to shop during her lunch break. Sale-crazed mothers in mini-vans were enough to intimidate even hardened warriors. It's why the Decepticons never raided near major shopping outlets this time of year. In the middle of a civil war, yes, but nobody was stupid enough to get in the middle of American commercialism. They'd probably end up with a price tag attached to one arm and pine cones lodged somewhere uncomfortable. Swindle loved it, but then again, Swindle had sold his own combiner team. The mech wasn't blessed with strength of common sense when it came up against his greed.

(3)Soundwave's Cassetticons were among those Decepticons. Rumble and Frenzy spent half of December wearing extremely shiny swag decorations around their necks like metallic boas. They'd also taken to stalking mechs in the corridors with boxes of ornaments, on an apparent quest to get someone to actually wear them like jewelry. So far, only Shrapnel had agreed to it. Fortunately, the only mechs in the base with even vaguely green (and therefore Christmas tree-like) paint jobs were the Constructicons, who regarded waking up covered in Christmas paraphernalia as a strange source amusement instead of annoyance. Mixmaster seemed to enjoy Christmas in general, which had led to the worrisome creation of several specialty 'drinks' and the base-wide announcement of, "Abort latte! Reboot, retry, rebrew! Whipped cream error!" This announcement had been followed by a large explosion on that Christmas Day not too many years ago.

(4)It hadn't been the ankle-chains so much as the fact that they'd been connected to a Russian submarine at the time. The Constructicons had waited until Wildrider realized he'd been disarmed and was neither large nor strong enough to move something the size of a submarine underwater. The Russians had obligingly towed him around the ocean by his ankles while he screamed for help that wasn't coming. Long Haul laid out the deal for the Russian navy: do as the Constructicons ordered, and he'd personally evacuate the crew to the nearest landmass, safe and sound — if lacking a submarine. Because Bonecrusher had waited until the crew was off and sunk it with Wildrider still attached. While over one of the deeper ocean floor trenches. Megatron eventually allowed rescuers to retrieve the hyperactive Stunticon, but by then, Wildrider had been trapped in pitch dark with freaky fish for about three days. He'd been kept mostly immobile by water pressure and the weight of a very large submarine. Wildrider never even twitched anymore under Hook's hands, and Vortex was openly trying to get the Constructicons to do it to him this time.

(5)The Stunticons collected Happy Meals toys. Dead End carefully set up shelves for displaying his collection, but the others stuck them haphazardly to their dashboards. Soundwave was feeling generous. Laserbeak and Rumble just wanted to pick up boxes of Christmas decorations for next year's plans. Also…yeah. Tinsel. Not even Decepticons were immune to the joy of flinging shiny tinsel at each other. Mixmaster used it to garnish his gasoline lattes, which only made them appear slightly less toxic. Waking up Christmas Day to a handful of cheap plastic toys and an alarmingly glitzy cup o' something poisonous and/or experimental, oddly enough, made Breakdown actually look pleased instead of paranoid. However, things went downhill from there.

It started with someone mentioning Valentine's Day…

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><p><strong>Prompt list:<strong>

"Do You Hear What I Hear?" – Christmas hymn

The Biblical story of Jesus' birth from the Books of Matthew and Luke

Charles Dickens' _"A Christmas Carol"_

"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" – Christmas song/poem

Clement Clarke Moore's "_A Visit From St. Nicholas"_

"Santa Clause is Coming to Town" – Christmas song


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